Ashutosh Garg: Despite venturing into an unknown field, Garg has expanded to 250 pharma stores in just 8 years

Ashutosh Garg: 54 years

Age at starting business: 46 years

Company name: Guardian Lifecare Private Limited

Headquarters: Gurgaon

Seed capital: Rs 10 crore

Source of money: Self-funded

Turnover after one year: Rs 2 crore

Current turnover: Rs 175 crore


The day I figured I was spending only 10 days a month with my family, I knew I had to quit my job. It was 2002, and I was running the Asian operations for Lockheed Martin and Hughes Network Systems. The obvious alternative was to start my own business, but I was 45 years old, not an ideal age to embark on a new venture.

It took me a year to convince myself and secure my family financially before I decided to take the leap. On 25 August 2003, four months after I quit my job, I set up the first Guardian pharmacy at the DLF Galleria Complex in Gurgaon. Today, I have 250 stores across 20 cities and 2,000 employees working for me.

Opening a chemist shop after working in the consumer and aerospace industries for 25 years (I had started my career in 1979 with ITC) was extremely difficult. My family was sceptical about my choice of business, especially my 15-year-old son Ashwin, who said, “How can you build a business waiting for people to fall sick?”

It was while researching for a suitable field that I became interested in the pharmaceutical retail market. It was teeming with spurious and counterfeit products and there was a huge opportunity because of its unorganised nature. I knew I would succeed if I could guarantee genuine medicines along with a hygienic ambience.

For the first store, I leased 300 sq ft of space in the DLF Galleria and paid a rent of Rs 25,000 a month. I remember that I earned Rs 5,000 on the first day. Today, I have expanded the store to 1,800 sq ft, again on a lease basis. I prefer to lease rather than buy as the latter is too expensive.

Becoming an entrepreneur means starting afresh no matter how much experience you have. So before launching, I spent hours observing how chemist shops function. In fact, I was actually behind the counters for six months when I opened the first store. This training provided a unique insight into the pharmaceutical retail business. Of course, I had hired four people to help me with the daily grind.

Though I was an amateur when it came to starting a new venture, I had already experimented as an angel investor. The early 1990s presented a lot of opportunities for investment in technology and I had put my money in a software firm and an Internet company. Over a period of six years, starting from 1996, I experimented with food franchises, Internet-based shopping, etc. So, I felt a little confident about handling the initial stages of the venture.

However, before investing all my savings, I set aside some money for my family, so that even if I failed, my wife and two sons would be able to live comfortably. During the initial years, my wife’s salary as a school teacher at the American Embassy School in Delhi helped because I invested all the revenue I earned in the first year in the business to propel growth.

The next major milestone for Guardian came in 2004, when I signed the sole franchisee deal for General Nutrition Centres, a US-based nutritional supplements company. Since then, I have forged several other successful partnerships.

The biggest challenge in the initial years was to create brand awareness. I used to insert leaflets in newspapers and advertise on local cable TV. Within two years, we launched a four-page weekly health supplement, Guardian Health Chronicle, which was published in Hindi and English, and was circulated with two dailies in the National Capital Region.

I also opted for several innovative cost-cutting methods to counter the high expenses I had to bear in the first few years. One of these was to cut down the length of a paper bill to save the cost of printer rolls, which helped us save 3,000 km of paper roll every year.

Of course, I committed my share of mistakes during the initial years—I selected inappropriate sites for opening the stores, bought inventories that would not sell and hired people who were not necessarily the best. I also took risks that I prefer not to think about. For instance, eight years ago, I put up my house as collateral in order to raise capital. While I was confident about Guardian, it was not a prudent decision as it would have affected my family in the long run.

Today, I review the performance of all the new stores every six months, and if one is not making money even after a year, I simply shut it down. In the first year, however, I had provided some stores a leeway of almost two years. Over the years, most of the problems that I faced have been ironed out. I’m glad that all the effort and money I invested in the Guardian pharmacies has paid off manifold.

(As told to Shobhana Chadha)