Story of PC Mustafa- A Coolie’s son who built a 100 Cr Company with just Rs 25,000

1929

This is the story of PC Mustafa who comes from a remote village in the Chennalode near Kalpatta in Wayanad district in Kerala. His mother never went to school and his father was a coolie.

Mustafa failed in the STD 6th however later managed to study in the National Institute of Technology in Calicut and Indian Institute of Management which is in Bangalore. Presently, he owns a 100 crore company named ID Fresh which sold idli and dosa batter throughout the major Indian cities. He launched the company with just Rs 25,000 now Mustafa employs people from the rural India.

The village Mustafa comes from only had a primary school and did not have facilities or road and electricity. He shares that they had to walk for 4 km to go to high school and so most of the kids dropped out after finishing primary school. His father Ahmed dropped out after class 4 and started working as a coolie on a coffee plantation. He is the eldest of his siblings and has three younger sisters.

PC Mustafa never dreamt of being an entrepreneur and rather wanted to be an engineer. One of Mustafa’s cousin, Shamsuddin, saw dosa batter being sold in plastic bags tied up with a rubber band in convenient stores. He then suggested that they should make dosa batters and supply them. Mustafa then invested Rs 25,000 to start the company immediately.

Consequently, Nasser, Shamsuddin, Jaffer, Naushad and Mustafa all came together to operate the company. They acquired a small place of 550 square feet where they began with two grinders, one mixer, and one sealing machine. They came up with the name ID which stands for idli and dosa and thus the name ID fresh as they intended to supply fresh dosa and idli batter.

In October 2015, ID Fresh became a 100 crore company. They celebrated it on a grand scale. They developed into producing 10 packets a day with the cousins managing the kitchen to 50,000 packets a day with the help of 1100 employees in a decade.

(Photo Credit: Rediff, The Logical Indian)