From a 20-Seater Café to Building Homegrown F&B Brands
Entrepreneurship is often portrayed through the lens of scale, the size of an organisation, the number of outlets, or the visibility a brand gains. Yet, behind every sustainable business is a journey shaped by smaller decisions, difficult lessons, and years of consistency. For Yogesh Sharma, Founder & CEO of Karigari Ventures Limited, that journey began with a simple belief: entrepreneurship is shaped as much by where you start as by how far you eventually go.
After completing his management studies at Symbiosis Institute of Business Management (SIBM), Pune, Sharma began his professional career in 2007 with Hindustan Times in Mumbai. His first salary was ₹6,500 a month, and his role involved extensive field marketing. Those years laid an important foundation for the entrepreneur he would eventually become.
The experience taught him discipline, resilience, communication, an understanding of consumer behaviour, and, perhaps most importantly, the value of relationships.
Yet, his desire to build something of his own remained. In 2010, with an investment of ₹10 lakh from his father, Sharma co-founded a small 20-seater café in Mumbai. While continuing his corporate job during the day, he spent his evenings at the café, experiencing hospitality from the ground up.
That first venture taught him a fundamental truth about the F&B industry: food is ultimately an emotional business. Serving guests, understanding why they return, and creating experiences that encourage loyalty became lessons that would remain central to his entrepreneurial philosophy.
What began as a small café eventually evolved into a broader entrepreneurial journey across hospitality and F&B, first through Futomic Group and subsequently through Karigari Ventures Limited.
For Sharma, however, one fundamental principle has remained constant throughout his journey: staying close to the consumer, the people, and the product, regardless of how large the organisation becomes.
Building Brands Around Product and Craftsmanship
As the Founder and CEO of Karigari Ventures Limited, Sharma approaches hospitality with a philosophy that is both straightforward and demanding: build a strong product first, and then build a strong business around it.
In an industry where branding and marketing may attract a guest for the first visit, Sharma believes that the product and experience ultimately determine whether that guest returns.
This philosophy is embedded in the identity of Karigari By Chef Harpal Singh Sokhi. The word “Karigari” represents craftsmanship, the skill, artistry, and attention to detail involved in creating something meaningful. For Sharma, however, craftsmanship extends far beyond food. It is reflected in the brand’s hospitality, interiors, service, and overall guest experience.
Chef Harpal Singh Sokhi brings extraordinary culinary knowledge and decades of experience with Indian cuisine to the brand. However, Sharma’s vision extends beyond building a brand solely around the recognition of a celebrity chef. The larger objective is to translate that culinary expertise into a product that is consistent, memorable, and capable of scaling.
This distinction is critical to his vision for Indian F&B.
Sharma believes an Indian restaurant brand can achieve significant scale without losing the essence that made it meaningful in the first place. As Karigari By Chef Harpal Singh Sokhi grows, the challenge is therefore not simply to open more locations, but to preserve the craftsmanship, warmth, and quality that define the brand.
The ambition is simple yet substantial: whether a guest walks into the first Karigari By Chef Harpal Singh Sokhi, the 50th, or the 100th, the experience should continue to feel unmistakably Karigari.
From Operating a Business to Building an Organisation
Every stage of Sharma’s entrepreneurial journey has brought a different lesson.
The 20-seater café taught him entrepreneurship at the grassroots level. Building Futomic Group taught him something broader, the difference between operating a business and creating an organisation.
As his ventures expanded, the focus gradually moved beyond individual outlets and day-to-day operations to people, systems, leadership, and scalability.
A defining milestone in this journey has been the development of Karigari By Chef Harpal Singh Sokhi as a chef-led Indian dining brand, along with its growing popularity among consumers across different markets. For Sharma, this has reinforced the belief that there is tremendous potential for organised, homegrown Indian F&B brands.
Yet, he does not measure success purely through outlet counts or awards.
For him, building teams capable of taking ownership, establishing systems that allow a business to scale, earning the trust of guests, and seeing customers return are equally meaningful achievements.
This reflects a deeper transition in entrepreneurship. A business becomes sustainable when it can grow beyond the founder. When people, processes, and leaders are capable of carrying the original vision forward, the organisation begins to develop a life of its own.
That is the kind of sustainability Sharma seeks to build.
Scaling Without Compromising the Experience
Hospitality is an industry where consistency can determine whether growth becomes sustainable or simply results in expansion.
Sharma’s experience has taught him that growth without consistency is not truly growth. Hundreds of small details contribute to a single guest experience. A restaurant may have strong marketing and impressive interiors, but inconsistency in food or service can immediately affect the consumer’s perception.
Consequently, innovation at Karigari By Chef Harpal Singh Sokhi is approached practically.
Innovation, in Sharma’s view, should either improve the guest experience or strengthen the business. Novelty for its own sake has little value if it does not contribute meaningfully to either objective.
At the same time, profitability remains an essential part of the equation.
Restaurant businesses must be commercially sustainable if they are to grow. This requires constant attention to food costs, operational efficiency, staffing, supply chains, menu engineering, and unit economics.
The challenge is to achieve those efficiencies without compromising what the guest ultimately experiences.
For Sharma, the ideal model is one where product strength, guest satisfaction, and profitability do not compete with one another but instead reinforce each other.
That balance forms an important foundation for sustainable scale.
Leadership That Creates More Leaders
Leadership often changes as a company grows.
In the early stages of entrepreneurship, founders frequently remain involved in everything. Every problem comes to them, every decision passes through them, and every operational detail can demand their attention.
But Sharma recognises that what may be necessary during the early stages can eventually become a limitation.
His leadership approach has therefore evolved from doing everything himself to developing leaders who can perform at a level beyond his own involvement.
Today, his role is increasingly centred on providing clarity of vision, establishing accountability, empowering leaders, and protecting the organisation’s culture as the business expands.
At the same time, accessibility remains an important part of his leadership philosophy.
Some of the most valuable insights, he believes, do not necessarily originate in a boardroom. They can come from a restaurant manager, a chef, a server, or even a guest.
This creates a leadership model based not on having every answer, but on creating an environment where capable people are trusted to take responsibility, question existing ideas, and contribute to a shared vision.
For Sharma, leadership is ultimately about building something larger than any one individual.
The Next Chapter: Scale with Discipline
As Karigari Ventures Limited and Futomic Group enter their next phase, Sharma’s focus can be summed up in three words: scale with discipline.
For Karigari By Chef Harpal Singh Sokhi, the ambition is to build one of India’s most recognised homegrown, chef-led restaurant brands. The growth opportunity across Indian cities is significant, but the objective is not simply to increase the number of restaurants.
Every new location must strengthen the brand.
This philosophy reflects Sharma’s larger perspective on the future of Indian hospitality. India is home to extraordinary culinary diversity, and he believes Indian hospitality brands have the potential to become institutions recognised not only nationally but eventually on the international stage.
Through Karigari Ventures Limited and Futomic Group, Sharma aims to continue developing differentiated F&B concepts, strengthening organisational capabilities, and creating businesses that combine creativity with strong commercial fundamentals.
For Sharma, the ultimate measure of success goes beyond the size of the company.
The aspiration is to build brands, teams, and institutions capable of lasting beyond their founders.
Building Something That Lasts
Sharma’s entrepreneurial philosophy is rooted in an understanding that meaningful businesses are rarely created through one extraordinary decision.
They are built through consistency.
His journey, from starting his career on a monthly salary of ₹6,500 to balancing a corporate job with a 20-seater café and eventually building ventures across the hospitality and F&B space, reflects the cumulative power of persistence and learning.
His advice to aspiring entrepreneurs begins with an important distinction: do not fall in love only with the idea of entrepreneurship; fall in love with the process of building.
Entrepreneurship inevitably brings periods when others may not see the same opportunity, along with setbacks, financial pressures, mistakes, and moments when progress feels slower than expected. For Sharma, these challenges are not separate from entrepreneurship; they are part of it.
His principles for the next generation are equally grounded: remain close to the customer, understand the numbers, respect the team, continue listening, and never stop learning.
Most importantly, build something that creates genuine value.
Marketing can create attention and capital can accelerate growth, but neither can permanently compensate for a weak product.
His own journey serves as the clearest expression of this philosophy. He started with what he had, remained committed to the process, and continued building.
Today, as he looks toward the next chapter of Karigari Ventures Limited and Futomic Group, his vision is not simply about creating larger businesses. It is about creating enduring brands, developing capable teams, and building institutions that can continue creating value long after their founders step away.
In the evolving landscape of Indian hospitality, Yogesh Sharma represents a leadership philosophy grounded in craftsmanship, discipline, customer understanding, and long-term thinking. His journey demonstrates that sustainable success is rarely the product of a single breakthrough.
More often, it is the result of hundreds of ordinary decisions made with conviction, consistency, and purpose over many years.
And for Yogesh Sharma, the philosophy remains clear: start with what you have, remain consistent with what you believe in, and keep building.
