Swimming against the current makes you stand out from the crowd. When everyone is treading cautiously it takes extraordinary belief in self to be experimenting and taking leaps. Such madness finds it’s way in Raunak Chandak who is distributing organic milk to lakhs of people.
Born in Kolkata and brought up in the steel city of Durgapur, Raunak chose to study mechanical engineering from Bangalore Institute of Technology after school.
Ever since his college days, Raunak was motivated to start his own business. He was inspired by potential of a small idea that came from a sentence in one of his engineering books that said, “Cryogenic treatment of steel is a sub-zero treatment where in the wear life of steel increases to extent of even double. Increase in life if HSS (High Speed Steel) tools in some cases are even 300 percent.”
Raunak ventured in the field of cryogenic treatment of cutting tools, a process that involves sub-zero processing of metals to enhance properties. He started this endeavour right after college taking that one line as his inspiration.
The concept was a new one in India as this technology was being used only in places like IISC, Bangalore, on a laboratory scale but doing it commercially was a challenge. He thought that if he could make the tooling used by his customers perform better, they would save a lot of money; a business potential right there!
Raunak formed his company Sintlcryos in 2009 at an age of 24 in Durgapur, West Bengal, and started chasing his dream. But soon, he found out that putting forward a new concept in the manufacturing industry was not easy. Initial setup for the cryogenic processing was a difficult prospect and getting people to believe in the technology was even harder. The cost and risk involved were too high and there was no consultancy available readily. But he did not lose hope.
With the help of Prof SK Sarangi of IIT Kharagpur, and financial help of Rs 5 lakh from his businessman father, Raunak built his first cryo-processing unit. Gradually, he started getting a few clients. But problems kept coming up one after another as there was no defined way to go about this business. Things were so unruly that at one point he decided to let go of his dreams and join his family business. His morale was down as people in the Industry were not ready to innovate. However, luck took a turn when his company and concept got featured on NDTV profit channel on the show “IBM Presents Smarter Enterprise.”
This gave him a boost to him and his company and propelled him to make a tie up with a USA company (300 Below Inc.) which is the number one company in the world in the field of cryogenic treatment of metals. With new enthusiasm and technology support business started flowing in. Many automotive companies are now his clients and his business is growing day by day.
In 2015, inspired by PM’s white revolution he also invested in the dairy business with three friends (Aloke Garodia, Anil Khemka, and Apurva Jalan) and their milk brand Masst Milk, which is now one of the fastest growing dairy brands in West Bengal.
Consolidated turnover of all his businesses today is more than Rs 35 crores and his businesses employ more than 80 people directly and indirectly.
For him hard work has no substitute and dreaming is the most important thing to succeed as an entrepreneur. Never say die attitude and crisis management are the real weapons of an entrepreneur. Ups and downs are a part of an entrepreneur’s journey. The thrill to win is the biggest addiction. He believes it is most important to stay grounded and focus on your work.
