How a Saurashtra village family changed the meaning of "bakery"
"Atul" means one that cannot be compared, and Atul Bakery has lived up to the word. Founded in 2011 by Atulbhai Vekariya, it now makes about 200 bakery products, with four factories in India and one in America, and its Gujarati-born bakery items have won hearts across the sea.
The Vekariya family comes from Dadvi, a tiny village in Jamkandorna, Saurashtra. It was a big family under heavy financial strain, and someone had to go out and earn. After Class 8, Atulbhai came to Surat. His father, Babubhai Vekariya, sold the family home and sent his sons to the city.
In Surat they bought a small, cheap shop and started a paan kiosk. Atulbhai helped there, and the work turned his mind toward business. Later he added tea and bhajiya, and in summer sold sugarcane juice, chichodo and sherbets. Business improved, so he took a bigger shop and opened a restaurant, selling his wife's jewellery to put together ₹35,000 for it. The restaurant did well, but a food licence problem he had not known about forced it to shut down, and it was a heavy blow.
He did not give up. Next to the restaurant was a dairy, so he learned the dairy trade and later rented a 10x10 space for his own. That didn't work out. Next door was a bakery, and there he learned how to make bakery products.
In 2011 he took one more risk and opened a small bakery, first selling some items he made and some he bought from others. He named it Amul Bakery, and it was more like a provision store, selling grains and groceries too. Then a big problem arose. The company behind Amul objected to the name. A signboard artist suggested a cheap fix: change "AMUL" to "ATUL", swapping the M for a T. And so Atul Bakery was born.
Early products often failed, and he sometimes handed them out on the footpath at night instead of selling them. He hired craftsmen and learned from them. When he opened a showroom, neighbours objected, and he had to move. Against all odds, he built the brand. By 2012, six Atul outlets were open, and by 2013, with his brothers Rameshbhai and Ashokbhai, he began making bakery products on a large scale by machine.
The company's rule is 100% clean business and no compromise on quality. In people's minds, bakery meant dirty business run by dirty people, and Atul worked hard to erase that image. All its products are 100% vegetarian, with no eggs. Today it makes cakes, bread, biscuits and namkeen, with 10 tonnes made every day. It runs 207 outlets across Gujarat, and about 700 people have jobs through its factories.
The records are remarkable. Atul Bakery holds 13 world records, including the world's biggest cake, which weighed 3,750 kg and was made on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's birthday. The company celebrates that day as "Atulya-Shakti Din" and calls Mr Modi its role model. Atulbhai's 21-year-old daughter, Dhruval, runs the American factory in New Jersey on her own.
Next, a huge unit is being built in Sanand to make 100 tonnes of bakery products a day, and the company hopes for an outlet in every district of India by 2030.
Atulbhai loves reading and listening, and his advice is simple: problems come according to your strength, so if they grow, you are more capable than you think. Be different, be better than others, and keep learning.