E141: Sanjay Vazirani, Founder and Managing Director of Foodlink

Hey guys, I'm Richard Fitzgerald. This is DubaiWorks, where we interview the business leaders making a difference in this great city. I like knowing something that has legacy. Exactly why we do DubaiWorks. So find entrepreneurs like Sanjay who built business stories that have been behind the scenes building their businesses. In this case for a couple of decades, it's got everything. It's got hotel management, background, restaurant turn-around, food passion, and then building the biggest catering business in India for weddings, etc. So much in this interview I really enjoyed it, and yeah, enjoyed the conversation. We have the founder and managing director of FoodLink, Sanjay Basirani, and we're going to be talking about how FoodLink started in 2003 with the objective to drive excellence in the Indian Food and Beverage Service industry. And within the last year they've expanded to Dubai, which is why we're here. They've had a sounding review from both industry and the general public. So we're going to talk about FoodLink. What is it? Also, we'll talk about the catering industry and market and what Sanjay and his team have in store for the future. Welcome. Thank you. Thanks for coming in Sanjay. So nice to meet you and tell us a little bit about your story. So back in 2003, when we started FoodLink, it was after I finished my hotel management school, I got into a management training program at a holiday in hotel there. And then after finishing the program, I joined a restaurant, a standalone restaurant as a restaurant manager. And soon I got into fixing sick units, the restaurants which were not doing well. I somehow landed up becoming an expert at reviving that. And at a point I was called a sick restaurant doctor. And while I was fixing one of the sick restaurants in the central suburbs in Bombay called Chamboor. The owner proposed to me that why don't you do this, take this restaurant on lease from me and run this restaurant. And that is where the first business for us in nearly 2003 started. After we took that restaurant, we revived it and started doing extremely well for us. And what we knew then was to do good food, good Indian and local, you know Chinese cuisine very well. And as I had graduated out of a hotel management school, all my batch mates had joined larger groups like the Hayat, the Taj or the Obrois. And when they would visit my restaurant, they would come and tell me that this is fantastic food. And why don't you bring it to you know south of Bombay, where the high network individuals and the spenders were. So that's where the thought of you know starting outdoor catering unit came to my mind that if we have the good food, why not take it to people if I can't get them to the central suburb, which is very far off the south Bombay with the where the target audience was. And you know we got some opportunities to do small caterings. And we took this food there and we got instant you know recognition as a small catering company. And that is where the inception of foodling happened. Amazing, brilliant story. I love it and well told, I love it from the education point of view. And then there's sort of organic growth you're learning inside the restaurant. But you weren't the chef, you were more the operations person working with the food as well. So I had joined the school of hotel management to be a chef actually. And I trained to be a chef in during my majority of my management training program. And because I could you know understand the nuances of the kitchen, it made it really easy for me to do what I do till date. Unfortunately you know once you start business, then your core for which I wanted to you know I joined the hotel management school, except for that I keep doing all the rest. You know it's about fundraising, it's about managing people, it's about managing the whole spectrum of business now. Yeah. But I surely want to retire as a chef and I finish you know this growth of my company to a point. Glad we discussed that. So you do have passion for foods, you like foods, you like eating foods. Absolutely. So so can you talk a little bit more about before we get to Dubai. What is it like running a business in India? What's it like running an Indian restaurant in India as a competitive, you know obviously everyone around the world knows Indian cuisine but what's it like there and is it the same as running a restaurant anywhere? So you know ours is a matter more versus of growth. When we started business the dynamics was very different around nearing two decades back. We started with this you know security which we revived we you know set up our catering outfit from that small kitchen we would do smaller parties. As you know things went on we started to get opportunities with you know other locations where we could operate a restaurant or where we could run in a club or location where you know we could get to do little outdoor catering. The difference definitely in India there's a very unique kind of peculiar ecosystem which is offered in its highly competitive the Indian food because in India everybody knows and understand deeply the Indian food. But you know at a point subconsciously we developed a differentiator we created a differentiator with the way we run our food service. Wedding catering is a huge thing in India and it's a tremendously a big market 50 billion market while we speak is only the wedding business in India which can say Indian Indian rupees maybe and it's not only India but it is affected or it's you know intending to affect the economies of lot of other countries whether it's Europe or whether it's UAE Far East is also you know one of the locations where because when a when a Indian wedding goes out it touches upon the tourism you know the hotel business gets in local Texas getting engaged. I know of some recent huge weddings we did at Lake Como in Italy and 600 top Indian business or high network people went there. So the branded stores like the Louis with Ho and you know the others were running out of the goods because you know the huge shopping spree and there was a big you know sport in the economical situation for for those three four days when we went there. So I think back in India opportunities it's a huge country lot of manageable people becoming more and more manageable as you know it's a young young population. So we will be very well poised to do what we're doing back in India. Okay and just a little bit more about I like the analogy about the restaurant sick doctor turning around because people can understand outside that analogy outside of death and be in the industry you know turn around people or cost cutters or things like that. What was what were your learnings like you know people listening in Dubai might think that they might know restaurants that didn't take off in the way that they wanted to. What's your approach to you know providing medicine to these sick restaurants. So this was back then you know I think most of the businesses which scale or which become big we wouldn't be able to articulate it then when I used to do it specifically this this work for my living. Basics you know sticking to the basics the good food the good service and the good ambiance if you get this right there's very rarely a restaurant can feel which lot of you know big investors and top quality entrepreneurs who want to be in F&B space do not get it right. So every time we got a restaurant which wasn't working either in numbers or the gas satisfaction or the staff you know satisfaction index used to be very low you would just go and set the food right set the service rate and get the ambiance rate. Yeah one two three but it is true you know it is true and I think people can relate in other industries as well like and I like how you said the ambiance as well because that's the culture and you know you can have a you can have a robotic like perfect service but it might feel soulless whereas if you don't have the the flair of the ambiance with the customers will feel that the staff are really passionate about this as well. So you studied hotel management and when you were telling the story I thought okay now is the time he's going to go and work with high S or Oberoi or whatever but instead you went into the catering part to provide for a different clientele you didn't open the high end restaurant outside the city in the suburbs you did catering and I was interested that you did it from the same kitchen how did it evolve from there did you pivot and is food link now only a catering business. So you know I had a reason to do what I did back in the days you know we had a very limited beginning we from a small town had gone to a large city like Bombay which we had never seen and joined the hotel management school and we had very limited resources. So while I started my business a sick unit I could understand then that catering business is the only business where you don't need much of a working capital because of the limited resources that was the only business that could have given us a 50% advance when we close a deal with the guest and we take that advance and we would hire you know the C-CG, the cutlery, crockery, glass or whatever the paraphernalia you need to execute the event and food we would cook from this and it started very small and then we built upon it as we got more popularity and more people started recognizing. So that was I think at the back of my mind the core reason that without capital only business we could do then was the outdoor catering. It's fascinating that seems like a kind of simple thing but it's like you have a natural flair for business because that's such a capital and the upfront payment is so important for cash flow and it's not something you think you picked up during a hotel management chorus like it's the education good for Indian cuisine and hotel management and for the service industry. I think like any other business you know education just gives you a basic orientation or a little awareness of what the trade is like but eventually it's about the experience it's about your you know day-to-day dealing and interaction with the business which which makes you more prudent you know after around nearing 817-18 years of experience we came to Dubai around 11 months or back and it was an experience with you know very limited resources again because back in India the machinery had come to a grinding halt and that's when I said okay let me take a small trip you know even under lockdown I was sitting home all time and there was no way we could even go outside the home and obviously my wife wasn't very happy you know me sitting and being very you know edgy at home not doing anything to do so I just told her I take a seven-day you know there was a permission we could take and come to Dubai and that's how I came in last September October here for a small trip yeah and then I stayed with a friend of mine who was very kind to you know host me at his house at the Meadows here and that's the time when I said oh this city looks you know alive and open yeah there's no much restriction they were literal restrictions but not so many and they were good opportunities and deals available to either acquire a restaurant location or to take a catering kitchen yeah and that's the opportunity which we looked at and mood are you know planning the buy so is that what you did did you acquire and existing again fixing something that wasn't working did you acquire at each of our first restaurant was in Burd Dubai which was you know a existing restaurant and we made a deal and we just did a little facelift and converted the kitchen little equipment here and then set up our China bistro brand that's the Indian Chinese brand we run yeah so the first restaurant yes we did take care was the was this restaurant which wasn't working for someone okay okay interesting about the Chinese foods I'm going to segue back because you mentioned that at the start Chinese food is popular in India as well so after the the number one cuisine that sells in India is Indian cuisine and second most favorite after the home food and the Indian food is the Indianized Chinese food that's the second best seller okay in entire India can you explain Indianized Chinese foods you know the history of that food goes that you know during I mean many years there were few Chinese families which got retained in India in Calcutta yeah and they formed something called the China town there yeah and you know while they were they were cooking originally the original Chinese food which is very bland and fairly you know non non spicy the slowly the influence of the Indian spiciness and tanginess came into that food yeah and that got food got modified and started getting called the Indian Chinese yeah that's good so origin is from Calcutta and slowly those chefs you know came to other parts of India and they were Chinese restaurants which started yeah and we perfected that we went back to Calcutta we did our research and then we set up our China bistro food which is Indianized Chinese food very good that I asked so but are you more into the brands and the Chinese bistro food and do you have an Indian brand or is it the catering and have you done catering yet in Dubai so you know as our our story went from one restaurant then we went into you know catering and catering became a larger business because it was more more about you know at a time 600 800 thousand people and slowly as as money started trickling and we learned business little more we set up our small catering kitchen and back in India we became wedding catering specialist to the extent that last three four years pre-COVID the richest family in India the money family to the super you know stars from the Bollywood runway they pick up most of these weddings we got to cater whether it was locally 23 countries we have gone and executed Indian wedding so you said yeah like comas you've actually done the wedding remotely as well I have a question on that but how big are the big Indian weddings so back in India I think you know to have a number of three thousand people attending a wedding or a four thousand is a very common number yeah it isn't very you know shocking well European parts and even in Dubai to have a two three thousand people is rare back in India you know as we grew we were bombay specific because catering is a very territorial and a very personalized business because Indian wedding everything can go wrong but the food yeah and the prominence and the importance is so high that you have to be super super focused on you know every delivery you do as big nerds we got that right we learned and then we also there's a huge religious dimension to certain communities who are very big spenders to the kind of food they do in a wedding so you know a pre-wedding there's a particular kind of food you could only do certain restrictions there's certain communities who don't use allow to use onion garlic and underground stuff certain communities have certain things on day so gradually we mastered that and hence we were then you know a comprehensively wedding catering experts okay the food of it you took some things can go wrong my mum has been in the in catering and food industry and has run restaurants but she always tells me of a story of when she was in her early 20s and she was running a catering business in in Dublin and I don't know what it was for but she was getting to the venue and she was in a small-ish car and she'd seven or eight cakes in the back seat and she hit the back of a car at the traffic lights and all the cakes ones everywhere in the car so it's just that's a kind of a scary story of what can go wrong in when you're delivering foods outside of a kitchen how do you kind of overcome those sort of things so you know I think as we grew we we started thinking and curating and customizing a lot so while we speak if there's an event of say three thousand people in Bombay at any of the large locations then now we have an infrastructure where we build a proper satellite kitchen we have mobile vans which you know one has a laundry being you know there's ironing facility hanging of chef-coats and waiters uniforms and the serviers and the tablecloths there's another van which carries around 300 raw ingredients maybe a rice a pulse or a spice or there's another one which has a consumables in it a tissue paper or a toilet paper so we virtually bring the infrastructure to the ground to be 100% correct and we also get a little efficient with that there are less wastages and if there's a last minute you know if two thousand people become 1500 we don't have to run here and there and we are able to then you know that happened over one and a half decades you know it took us 10 12 15 years to arrive and that kind of a situation which we had in today that's amazing that's fascinating like you know we think of to cater for that number of people might be in a big hotel or might be a function or might be a concert or something like that but usually they would have pop-up facilities like a concert they would have pop-up at the event whereas you're actually coming in and out quicker than that and you're doing it yourself there's not a yeah so I didn't even think of it like that it's fascinating so and how you explain this is very efficient and all the different parts that go in it's not just the food and that that keeps the quality high absolutely amazing so so it's not the business that you also want to bring to Dubai as well so the way we have now we have a very very clear cut you know blueprint of what we want to do in Dubai what we did in the way we realized after doing the first outlet that there's a huge demand not only for the dinon but more for the delivery business so we've come up with something called a hybrid version of the restaurants now the China bistro our Chinese Indianized Chinese food brand which has a humongous expect acceptance here luckily for us also has a high-end cloud kitchen called Art of Dham okay now Art of Dham is a 300 year old cooking technique of the Indian cuisine which we have again perfected and we have you know dressed it up with very unique you know a packing so Art of Dham goes everywhere we do a China bistro now while we speak we have set up six restaurants in 10 months and a boutique catering kitchen from where we also deliver Art of Dham food it's it's a Northwest Frontier menu and that also is worked out very well for us so the hybrid we are able to sweat the set and the same kitchen also does food production for us for smaller caterings at Amrit Silvila or maybe so in the wedding side of business as I said we have a clear blueprint we have the restaurant and the hybrid and the delivery business as one part we have the Indian wedding because we are wedding catering specialists and before I moved here last pre-COVID 3 4 5 years we used to come and do half a dozen weddings every year whether it was at a world of Estuarial in Russell Kema or Amrit Sills at Abu Dhabi the Amrit's palace hotel yeah so that takes a little different treatment hotel gives us the support when we do a Indian wedding yeah they give us a extended kitchen or maybe some space in their kitchen we bring our culinary experts and we cook the food we bring our raw material the specialty raw material which is not available in the by so we are taking that business model forward for the Indian wedding here what we have done is we have tied up with a few hotels already and we have also catered like so burjalara recently we did a Indian catering and we did 100% of our food in one of the banquet halls Versace Plaza which is a very famous hotel here has allowed us to remodel their banquet kitchen to the need of the Indian food which they need to give to the Indian weddings so we did a few weddings and we have a lot of weddings booked in the next you know 12 months at raffles we are doing a buyout the most fascinating which I'm very excited about event which we are catering here in January is below the Dubai Island we are doing 800 people event wow for a Indian wedding it's a musical night nice and we are doing pop-up of some good our own restaurants and some likes of nobu and shipriyani and we are doing a fantastic event so that will be because there's a nice area outside there below the Dubai Island which is a stunning backdrop yeah well cool wedding lucky people if you look forward to it actually so you know you described moving to Dubai about starting really small but actually you've been in and out this is one of the 20 something countries that you've done venues at so I was going to ask has it come from word of mouth are your clients sort of while the Indians who live in Dubai who want to have their weddings here or is it more a case of that you kind of have to generate marketing and spread word of mouth here to get the business so catering is clearly word of mouth if you deliver a fantastic wedding the high net worth individual people will only recommend you when they trust you 110 percent maybe 150 if they have to recommend you to somebody yeah so we get recommendations early days you know pre-COVID we have a local gentleman Mr. Rizwan Sajan yeah his son Adil's wedding we had catered it was a case study actually we catered on a cruise liner we had him on the show yeah okay so Adil's wedding was unique we have a lot of case studies over these two decades where we have been to the wedding case businesses so Adil's wedding was at a Costa cruise which you know it's a Muslim family cababs and curries and rotis at the bare minimum they would want at a good wedding and 800 high net worth individuals locals and high net worth Indians were on that cruise and the cruise did there was no we were not allowed to use a coal or a flame directly because cruise restrictions on an Indian food you can't do without those two so then we went back my teams went to Barcelona where the cruise was parked and we went and checked the gadgetry and we checked the electrical installations in that cruise and we fabricated equipment which on electrical side could emulate or replicate the same flavors of cababs and the curries and the rotis which we could do and that was a three and a half days started from Barcelona the event it was filled with you know the way I had a lot of Hollywood stars and you know good people and three and a half days it was more of a culinary journey which we could give them the experience as much as it was about you know from Barcelona to Khan's Khan's to yeah Mercy Mercy to Samana put Italy the event ended after three and a half days wow I think that's this is the development for the next 10 years with this client saying like that you know because out of fashion we enjoy the more challenging you know assignments like these yeah we have had stories you know in St. Moritz in Switzerland we were catering for 500 people and there were because highest hotel could accommodate was 80 to 100 people so we had to make a base kitchen outside and only place we could get was a frozen lake on which we had to make a kitchen and we executed that to perfection heads off to my team actually they are brilliant yeah and the last day event was to get over four hours before that my executive chef and couple of guys who were managing that kitchen sense that you know this this wouldn't last for long and they started evacuating the kitchen and by the time the last working table was lifted the whole you know it could have been now kitchen in the water then no one no one was harmed no food was lost the fishes didn't eat the kitchen was so fantastic tasty what sort of team do you have is is it the project based you bring people in and obviously at that level of cuisine you need to almost compete with the high-end restaurants for the for the executive chef's like how do you identify with the talents and what sort of size team do you have so over the time we've realized that you know food service company of our kind and caliber food is the hero whether you run a you know richest man suns wedding or you run a fast casual diners like our china bistro India bistro which we already have in Dubai our food has to be the best so what I have gone back doing we have you know a talent capital I call it the top twelve chefs of each genre say a Japanese master chef or Italian master chef or within Indian the modern Indian culinary expert I have a team of these guys back in Bombay who are part of our organization and they keep doing research and development and they figure out what's coming next what could be the next thing and hence we we have also with that virtue become curation experts so if a high-network individual guy never wants to repeat a menu never wants to repeat a style never wants to repeat a concept and we have become specialist of that by the virtue of the talent pool and talent capital we have back okay I always kind of inventing new concepts and experiments yeah we've always stayed ahead of curve on the culinary side of it and hence food link is what it is so very humbly I'm putting you know we we were very humble start 17 years back and today we are the largest food and beverage company in India when you speak that's amazing congratulations what what sort of how do you measure that are you listed is it up by revenue or is that by team size so it's by the team say revenue followed by the team size followed by the number of locations we are present in yeah the reaching the catering business has been territorial because it's moment pop shop we are the first you know company in India which is digitalized the business completely we have a very strong and robust backend integration we have ERP in business we have complete transparency across you know we use softwares like the sales force which you know is a international you know software which here it does CRM and does multiple things and enables us to run a restaurant catering business with a lot of systems and processes we have worked very hard on mass personalization because you know when we talk of two thousand people high network individual and similarly you know we have a wedding going on in Bombay and then in Delhi then in you know five seven at a time so the personalization luckily the leadership team at food link the DNA and there's huge and biving off you know this personalization which has become the culture of the company yeah and that's helped us to be who we are today amazing it's interesting that COVID sort of was the trigger point for you coming to Dubai but do you think that would have happened eventually when you said 17 years it reminds me of we had someone who was involved with bringing five guys to the UAE and the history of the five guys story was one burger shop for 17 years same number before they opened their second chain so I always think of people when they're trying to expand too soon like there's so many things that can happen in those first two decades to get everything fine tuned like you described but many there are many famous Indian restaurants in Dubai there's many famous Indian chefs in Dubai you must have been tempted to come sooner we always wanted to come to Dubai I have been coming in and out we've been coming and doing weddings but India by itself is a huge consumption story yeah so we know the mentors the advisors I have today always guided me that you should finish you know you're one territory and go to the next and India was so large so it took us a while and coincidentally we were about finishing and the the fifth location in India of our presence and Covid came we had to you know prefer that a little machinery was stopped I came here and you know we have set this up as one of our you know added and from here we as I said you know we'd get affiliation with a lot of hotels also what also worked in our favor is that back in India still people are not very they're fairly nervous about large celebrations while the big tourism board and the government has demonstrated that you know it's safe they're following the protocol you know everything is in fine they have they have done such successful expo yeah it's giving a lot of inspiration and confidence to a lot of Indian families to come and celebrate yeah and once they're here two year two decade old company of India leading you know catering companies available here already as a regional official it's very easy for us to attract okay so nearly a dozen weddings we have already got in the last one and a half two months once they have known that we've opened our central kitchen here we are able to work in the hotel with a lot of ease earlier we were mobilizing 150 people to execute a wedding here now we need to mobilize only 30 40 specialist special butlers or particular specialists from you know regional side who we don't have as a capacity here so it's it's working out for us you know India coupled with this is a good good synergy for us that's yeah Sanjay what's the we mentioned it's a competitive landscape in India but what's your assessment of catering industry in the UAE do you need to be specialized you know obviously you're taking the Indian cuisine approach but you know there are very big weddings already happening in the UA there's local weddings there's both diaspora expo weddings there's lots of different things what's your assessment of the competition are are yeah how how many companies are there how big there are are their main players and things like that so in the way you know it's it's of course we have thought of the verticals which we want to you know at what time start focusing on so instinctively the wedding catering of course comes naturally to us and we already set because hotel also does give a lot of support when we do a wedding we don't need a infrastructure which is really big so weddings in the hotel we also were able to you know make a the biggest you know rather the epitome of catering here locally is the World Trade Center so we already have been you know we have a restaurant within the World Trade Center in Indian restaurant and the moment we made that Indian restaurant there we also have now got a tie-up with the World Trade Center to give them the Indian catering side of it so even expo little bit of our catering food goes via the World Trade Center okay so we have we have identified different pockets we have verticalized our catering which is called foodling boutique which is super specialization from say 50 to 150 people which goes into the villa villa which goes into you know other venues where it could happen so we have modeled it in such a way that with a very small capability of kitchen utilizing the ability of the cloud or the hybrid restaurants we have we are able to do sizable catering okay fascinating I like your approach as well about the synergies especially having a restaurant there first and then you can use that kitchen something that touched on earlier about the hotels I would have assumed that the hotels do their own catering is is that not the case they outsource as well so what I see coming you know if you if you go back 5 7 8 years a lot of hotels were FNB specialists but they still needed a specialist like a Chippriani to come and have one outlet in the hotel to give it a little more you know robust feel on the FNB space they can have their own right for example yeah Nobu is quite popular you know most lot of five star hotels gets a Nobu coming in and they stabilize their FNB division like that what I see coming and with the emergence of the Indian weddings and more and more people in India getting manageable more exposure to the global trends in India now people will need a catering company like us to be on their side a hotel to be able to do good Indian weddings because the complexity of the food solution to a wedding is humongous and hotels how much ever they try will never be able to understand or even if they want to get the expertise of that kind it is more sensible to work with someone like us because this is we have a plugin play hotels if they create their interest structure they would use it for say 10 weddings in a year for us 10 hotels we'll have 10 weddings so we have the capacity and it's it's matter of time that a group like a Marriott will call upon us and tell us that why don't we partner block and we they give us the first right of refusal when it comes to doing specific Indian wedding okay so that type of commercial arrangements okay fascinating moving on to a few different trends I know you said the company is very advanced digitally but what's your sort of view on the digital trends in the food business I know it's a broad question but let's just take manufacturing for example I was yesterday at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh and I met a lot of companies around who are you know doing farming in different types of food production there's a lot of trend around plant-based foods and things like that what are you seeing in the Indian cuisine around manufacturing ran phase and production so to me Indian food definitely has you know traveled across the globe and has its own appeal and requirement to Indian food will stay conservative is my view packaged food is going to be the next big thing in the Indian food I think you know packaged food either frozen or retort packed is going to be I think exponentially growing because of the demand of Indian food globally yeah okay and from from a point of view of where you get your food from where you when you get your supplies from do you you know do you do you have farms do you have arrangements with dairy companies with like how do you source what are your suppliers system and process like what's your procurement around food like so back in India we have a fairly evolved we have direct arrangements with the farm we have you know direct arrangements with the English vegetable going farms which are you know 30 20 25 kilometers from a base kitchen okay apart from that you know in Dubai we are still kind of in a process of streamlining our procurement and our skill in India is very large yet we are a startup here 10 months old six restaurants catering but I think next year or so we would be quite evolved here yeah currently we are sourcing all our specialty ingredients for us specialty ingredients would be the Indian spices which you know have given the food the edge which we intend to give we are getting it from India can be amazing so I can't not ask you personally about what's your favorite restaurants in Dubai what's your favorite favorite food so my favorite food after Indian is Japanese food so I like the Nobu the Zuma the you know Roca yeah those are my few favorite and you think they're very good here in particularly in Dubai they're well-known I think they're well-known and they are oversuccessful from the point of you from the origin where they come to what they had I think Dubai has a huge you know a consumption story on on the F&B today you know while we speak even Covid times it is not very easy to get tables at the restaurant especially at the the IFC and these other locations today virtually it's impossible with so many tourists come down it's very hard to walk into a zoo and get a place right sure they are the weaker you are yeah that's interesting um but you know some people do say that you can get some of the best Indian food in the UAE is that true or is there no place like um yeah no I think it's it's quite a quite competitive here but the distinguishing factor of good and very good food to regular Indian food is quite higher there's a lot of regular Indian food here but good Indian food is is not not so commonly seen here if you might if you had to entertain someone or celebrate an anniversary or something in Indian restaurants in Dubai which one would you pick yeah best one okay smart diplomat academy Sanjay it's been a pleasure talking to this morning fascinating insight love the backgrounds and yeah we follow what you do in future such a good conversation with Sanjay even though they're a very successful business they also are start up in Dubai as well so we could learn so much and that and a good insight into the you know the FMB and catering industry as well uh big thank you to Richie and Shahir who put this podcast and show together I would remind you that you can uh if you're listening to this on audio platform please do subscribe or leave a comment um any suggestions welcome on different types of guests different types of industry and even if you know us founder a CEO or you are one yourself and you would like to be interviewed on Dubai works uh please do get in touch uh also reminder that we do have the smashy apps available there are streaming platform apps and all the 141 episodes are 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