Hyderabad: Paradise, a iconic Hyderabadi brand, whose aroma since 1953 has floated throughout India and even abroad, has now changed hands with Mumbai-based private equity players Mumbai Samara Capital licked almost all promoter shares in the company.
Samara Capital, who made his first investment of Rs 70 Crore at the Secunderabad-based Paradise Food Court in 2014, has had for years raising his shares to 49% with a total investment of around Rs 200 Crores to 2020 and recently acquired.
51% of the shares, which are left with the promoter, around RS 562 Crore.
According to the source, the original promoter of Paradise – Ali Hemati – now only has around 1% of the shares in the company which is the only utas that connects the chain to the root of hyderabadi now.
Hemati, however, will continue to be the chairman of the food court of heaven and have supervision and provide guidance to the management team, which shifted the gear to run professionally after Gupta Gupta was issued as 2016 CEO by Samara Capital.
The story of Paradise began in 1953 when Hussain Hemati and Ghulam Hussain prepared it as a small canteen in Paradise Cinema Theater in Secunderabad.
From a single outlet, Biryani Joint, Paradise began to spread its wings after the current promoter Ali Hemati took control of his father in 1978 as his popularity grew.
In 2014, when Samara Capital entered the image, Paradise was only a six-outlet chain with even his office was operated from the main Secunderabad restaurant.
With the PE company on board, everything began to collect steam.
Heaven shifted her company office to a separate building close to the first outlet and professional CEO was brought in.
Today, the icon brand has around 50 outlets in 13 cities in six states and with PE players on the helmet now see the opposite with around 100 outlets on radars at the end of 2022 and even international recording for the next two years.
Shows that Biryani is a very interesting category and can be scaled, Nilay Pratik, Vice President, Samara Capital said: “Paradise is the leader of the most famous categories and brands in Biryani & offer the best and most authentic hyderbadi biryani with strong and most authentic value with value Which strong for money propositions, fast service, delivery and takeaways are digitally activated and true hyderabadi provenance.
Combined with a format that can be scaled, this has made a brand ready for accelerated expansion.
“According to Paradise Food Court Pvt Ltd CEO Gautam Gupta, chain Biryani is looking at 10x growth in the Indian market with plans to grow up to 500 restaurants in 100 Tier-1 and 2 cities in 2026-27.
So what else has changed in Paradise for years? For one, the source indicates that professional management has been able to solve the scale formula by cutting dependence on chefs thanks to automation.
“The holy grail lies in breaking dependence on the chef to shift to automation, namely cooking oven-based dum, which is nothing to do in India except Heaven.
That is the breakthrough achieved in the past year, making it ready to improve,” said a source.
According to the source, this is also one of the reasons the chain has grown at slow speed despite the takeover by professional management but now with a back-end actually regulates and the automatic cooking process, it steps on the gas.
In addition, aside from the omnichannel approach that straddle dinner, home delivery and taking, new management has focused on reducing the outlet size, which previously spacious restaurants, to smaller modular formats with around 30-40 including dine-in along with takeaway and Home delivery or just house carrier outlets and home delivery.
HYD: PE FUND LAPS UP ICONIC Paradise Biryani Chain
