When Sunil Vashisht cleared his Class 10 and was looking forward to starting college, his parents told him they did not have the funds to pay his fees.

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Sunil realised if he wanted to continue his education, he would have to manage everything on his own steam.

Today, the 45-year-old resident of Delhi is the founder of a multi-crore brand ‘Flying Cakes’. Recalling his college days, Sunil says he worked as a milk delivery boy to earn a stipend.

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“I would leave home at 5 in the morning, distribute milk for an hour, collect the money from these homes, and then hand it over to the company,” he says.

After spending an hour distributing the milk, Sunil would return home and pack his bag to attend the college lectures.

His graduation years too saw him taking up many odd jobs — sometimes, a waiter at a farmhouse or restaurant, a salesperson at a sari store, and other times a courier delivery person.

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However, the job stints did not last long and took a toll on his studies, forcing Sunil to quit his studies in the second year.

With a degree that was now incomplete and the future looking bleak, he applied to be a pizza delivery boy in 1998.

But, one day he had to rush home in the middle of his shift to attend to his pregnant wife who was having labour pains.

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He was fired the next day! “This incident changed me. I promised myself that I would never be someone’s employee again,” he shares.

One day, a friend got talking to him about the love people in Noida had for desserts. “So, when I found out that there was a new mall opening in Sector 61 in Noida, I thought I could set up a cake shop there,” says Sunil.

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Through the months that followed, he started borrowing money from friends, and eventually, collected enough to rent a small space in the mall. He even sold his wife’s jewellery during this time.

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In 2007, Sunil’s cake shop named ‘Flying Cakes’ was born — a brand that would focus on pastries, birthday cakes and desserts.

Today, Flying Cakes has a presence across 15 outlets in Indian cities with each outlet getting close to “100 plus orders every month”.

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As Sunil reminisces how his brand scaled, he says, “What I have learnt is that when things get toughest, that’s exactly when you shouldn’t give up. It will change.”

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