G R Balasubramaniam left school when he was just 13. Over five decades later, the business he started by selling butter door-to-door has grown into GRB Dairy Foods, a company with revenue of more than Rs 1,000 crore.
Balasubramaniam left Class 8 in 1970 and moved from his village in Tamil Nadu to Bengaluru. He joined the butter business run by his elder sister and brother-in-law.
For the next 14 years, he learnt the business from the ground up. He bought butter from small producers, delivered it to customers, maintained accounts and also learnt how butter could be turned into ghee, according to Your Story.
“I had no other option,” he told the outlet. “My father could not take me back. So I told myself, this is my life now. And because I threw myself into it fully, I learned everything. That involvement for those 14 years is the reason I am where I am today.”
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In 1984, at 28, Balasubramaniam got married and six months later he decided to start his own business. He had only Rs 6,000 in savings. After paying Rs 3,000 as advance rent for a small room, he was left with just Rs 3,000.
“I sat not knowing what to do. I knew butter, I knew ghee, but I had never been the one making decisions. It felt like a blank. Like nothing was there,” he said. So, he first organised a chit fund to raise money. He later used around Rs 50,000 from the fund to buy his first stock of butter.
He sold around 75 kg of butter every month and delivered it to customers himself door-to-door across Bengaluru. Then, he decided to grow his business and instead of selling only butter, he started converting it into ghee and selling it to hotels, sweet shops and households.
Within a year, his monthly income reached around Rs 25,000. He then rented a 10-by-20-foot shop, hired a few workers, and started selling ghee under the initials G.R.B. In 1993, the company entered the Chennai market under the Udhayam brand.
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GRB set up its first factory in Bengaluru in 1991. It later opened another facility in Dindigul and a larger factory in Hosur in 1999 and soon the company expanded across Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and other markets.
Today, GRB Dairy Foods sells ghee, sweets, snacks, spices and other products in more than 40 countries, including Singapore, Australia and the UAE. Ghee remains its biggest business and contributes around 75-80 percent of the company’s total business.
GRB reported revenue of more than Rs 1,084 crore in FY25. Balasubramaniam is now targeting revenue of around Rs 1,400 crore. The company has around 2,500 employees.
