Pawan Raj Kumar is the Founder of Supa Foods and Hoi Foods. Supa foods is known for products like Supa corn and misht which are available in more than 3,000 retail outlets in India.

Pawan is also an active angel investor in 15+ startups. Some of well known startups, where is an angel investor are Qikwell(Acquired by Practo), LifCare and Leverage Edu.

Pawan has an entrepreneurial experience of 24 years. He started out in his family venture of Industrial Food Equipment, supplying and servicing to Large Food Chains like McDonalds, Pizzahut and Dominos.

Some key quotes by Pawan during our conversation are:

“After Graduating from IIT-Delhi and IIM-Lucknow I joined my family business as a welder. Spent first 3 months as a welder.”

“If I am salesman of discounts then it’s not a business I want to be in because I am not adding any more value.“

“Businesses have to be built without emotions. Emotions about passion in business are important, but emotions about making business like a child of yours is wrong emotion to have for a business. I stopped having those kind of emotions long time back and I think that has served me well. One of the biggest mistake I have seen a lot of entrepreneurs make is that they can’t just let it go. There is a time when an entrepreneur’s passion cannot grow the business anymore. You need either professionals to come and run your business. You need to take a backstep, you should be ready to do that. The old mentality of building a legacy out of business is over. One should look at business as generating value for the society and hence you make money out of that. And the minute you are not adding any more value to the business, you have to step out.”

“Whatever has happened in the world so far and whatever will happen in future is because of entrepreneurs. Because somebody is taking a risk in innovating something, coming up with something new, trying to change something small or big. And that what keeps on improving the world. So I want to be part of that journey in my small way and that’s what drives me towards investing in startups.”

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