Chaman Lal Setia Exports Pvt Ltd set up a rice mill in Amritsar in 1969. But they endured loss in the business till the 1980s when they started exporting Basmati Rice under the brand name Maharani Rice. The business stabilised with their export venture and Vijay Setia- Managing Director, CLSE Pvt Ltd. was quite content with the satisfactory profits till 2009, when his son Ankit Setia joined business. Ankit wasn’t satisfied and was determined to bring growth into the family business and implement his learnings from reputed Business School and Business Gurus. He knew CLSE Pvt. Ltd. was capable of much more.

He approached InfodriveIndia and seeked the market intelligence reports from us, before taking his first business trip to Singapore.

So far, they were exporting only 10 containers of rice per year to the country. Ankit studied the reports well, did his homework and flew to Singapore, armed with all the strategic information he needed to meet the buyers in Singapore. Sometimes experience of years paints the reality in bias and heightens our belief in gut feeling. Same happened with Vijay Setia, who believed Singapore to be a small market and did not expect Ankit to find any new orders.

But just three days later, Vijay got a call from Ankit informing he that he had already booked 175 containers of rice in the presumably small country, and asked if he should take more orders! Vijay was completely astonished and found his belief in the power of information offered by InfodriveIndia. Since then CLSE Pvt Ltd has been growing leaps and bounds. From 200 Cr, they grew 4 times and today do a business of nearly 900 Crores, almost 90% of which comes from the exports.

The major change that Ankit brought about was the tremendous expansion of territories. The same information that Ankit had used was readily and equally available to Vijay, but he did not use it! Vijay shares that “People keep sitting on goldmines and do not know how to mine”. For more of his insights and their growth mantras, watch the following videos.