CALCUTTA 64: An Entrepreneur’s Journey to Success

Abstract

Calcutta 64 is a case about a café cum restaurant in the Salt Lake area of Kolkata. A family-owned business, where the front porch of the house was converted to accommodate the café was launched in 2014. The case talks about the growth of the business by an entrepreneur, who quit his cushy IT job to start this venture. It was a traditional café and the owners did not indulge in serving their customers liquor nor did they allow smoking in the café, despite it being popular in the surrounding competitive cafes. In 2019- 5 years of withstanding the seasonality, the dependence on local markets and local tastes, intense competition and constant involvement required to run the café, the main protagonist, Debojit Paul pondered if they should expand and open more outlets of the café in other areas of Kolkata. Though Paul was not faint of heart and he realized that despite the glamour associated with the café business, it was notoriously tough, he wondered if he should risk expanding especially considering the fact that even if one of the new cafes did not work it would undo the work and profit of the original café, besides he was very emotional about his cafe. Growth versus profitability was a tightrope and hence Paul needed to be cautious with expansion. In the café business, it was difficult to scale successfully given the upfront capital expenditure and operating expenses involved and with the proliferation of cafes in almost every area basically Calcutta 64 was competing against everyone, including leading cafes. The decision he had to make at this juncture despite breaking even at Calcutta 64 was should he expand or instead of chasing numbers and diluting his brand should he stick to what he had and expand organically?