From Washing Plates to Rs 50 Crore Business: Story of Prem Ganapathy founder of Dosa Plaza who left studies after 10th to support family

Prem Ganapathy

He arrived in the city of dreams, Mumbai, in 1990, a seventeen-year-old with two hundred rupees and a friend’s promise. He carried the quiet hope of lifting his family—his parents and seven siblings—out of struggle. But on the platform at Bandra station, that friend vanished, taking the boy’s money and his trust.

Alone in the endless rush, Prem Ganapathy had nothing. That very emptiness became his strength. With nothing to lose, everything that came next felt like a chance.

The next day, he found a job washing dishes in a bakery for 150 rupees a month. It came with a place to sleep on the floor. He took it. He saved every coin, picking up more work. For two years, he worked, saved, and watched.

In 1992, he made a decision. With saved money, he rented a handcart. He invested about 1,000 rupees in utensils and a stove. On a street facing the Vashi railway station, he began selling idlis and dosas. It was just a cart. But he decided it would be the cleanest cart anyone had seen. He and his brothers wore clean clothes and caps. People noticed.

The food tasted of home, and the spotlessness made them trust it. Soon, the cart was earning a turnover of nearly 20,000 rupees a month. They lived in a single rented room, their cart both kitchen and livelihood, constantly facing the risk of it being seized.

Five years later, in 1997, he stepped into a small, proper space. He called it ‘Prem Sagar Dosa Plaza’. His customers, many of them students, became his friends. They showed him the internet, where he began to discover recipes from across the globe. He started to experiment. A Schezwan dosa was born. Then many more. Within five years, he had created over 105 different varieties.

He dreamed of a spot in a mall, but was told he was not a “brand.” Yet, the managers of Centre One mall knew his food. They offered him a space. He took it.

That was the turn. Requests to open more outlets began to flow in. Today, that single cart has grown into over 70 outlets, from India to Dubai and Australia. What began with a stolen two hundred rupees now sees an annual turnover of more than Rs 50 crore rupees.

This is not a story of a sudden idea. It is a story of what happens when you are left with nothing but your own two hands. It is about the choice to wash dishes thoroughly, to wear a clean cap, to see a railway station not as a place of loss, but of possibility.

Most of all, it is a quiet reminder. The easiest thing to do on that Bandra station platform in 1990 would have been to give up. But the hard route, the one where you start with nothing and build everything with care—that route can lead you to places even a seventeen-year-old in a crowded station could never have imagined.