Growth Is Not a Statistic, but a Mindset—One That Can Emerge Even from a Peanut Shop.

N. Raghuraman Management Guru

‘Why don’t you sit next to a roadside peanut seller and ask him what his daily turnover is? Suppose he says Rs 350, then sit with him and plan to increase it to Rs 700. This will be the first step to focus on growing any business 100%. By doing this you will experience money, profits and growth together.

If you can’t find a peanut seller, then sit in a snack stall and help its owner double his business. For decades, I have been giving this advice to all those MBA students who are in their third semester and go for internship in a company in the fourth semester before placements.

The reason for this exercise is that every MBA student should be capable enough to look at the condition and growth potential of a business and identify opportunities and ways to make money in it. Students who adopted this simple practice did much better in their careers than those who ignored it as basic and desi.

For those who still consider this exercise mundane, I invite them to look at the results achieved by MBA students from Mumbai’s premium university – Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS). He changed the name of a simple vada pav stall and changed its owner’s fortunes. This is the story of Borun Saha, who runs a Vada Pav stall in Vile Parle, Mumbai, where there are many colleges nearby.

Saha’s stall was similar to hundreds of stalls present in Mumbai. The only difference was the location. It was near a college where Gen-ji was attending. When NMIMS students Samara Khan, Aadya Ravindran, Saanvi Rane, Maisha Mukherjee, Ayaan Abbagani and Hitarathi Savla were studying Branding and Advertising, they too heard the age-old dialogue ‘think out of the box’.

But this group actually started implementing the suggestions mentioned above. His class assignment was- ‘To completely transform a local business.’ The group decided to find such a business. Eventually, they reached the same stall where they usually met. He came up with the idea that every college student has a favorite snack spot. And the stall where he used to go became his lab. He talked to the stall owner Borun Saha and he agreed.

Can you imagine that Vada Pav seller Saha would have ever watched the popular Indian dating reality show like ‘Splitsvilla’ on MTV? The reel he made got more than 20 lakh views. In this, Saha and his customers are seen supporting Akanksha Chaudhary, the best contestant of ‘Splitsvilla Season 16’. The show premiered in early 2026. 23 year old Akanksha, originally from Jaipur, is a model and engineer.

Can you also believe that Saha, who hardly knows the meaning of ‘X’, tells his customers that ‘You have been blocked by your ex’? So come, buy vada pav, I will let you stock them on your phone. Students created content that their generation loved.

They changed the logo and named the stall ‘Vadavaov’. Today, students from nearby colleges come to the stall and ask Saha’s son, ‘Where is the reels brother, hasn’t he come today?’ Saha, who has been running the stall for the last 32 years, saw that his business increased manifold due to the popularity of these reels.

The bottom line is that Before stepping into the working world and tasting real career success, students should try their hands at promoting small businesses online and offline.

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