#Columns: A Different Taste

What would a City lawyer and a Rhodes Scholar do if they didn’t want to practice the law? Mathew Chandy (batch of 2001) and Sameer Singh (batch of 2002) from the National Law School of India University, Bangalore decided that the answer was to open up an ‘on-the-go’ Indian roll joint in Soho, London.

Mooli’s, which opened its doors for the first time on November 9, is a venture started by two lawyers, a chef and a moolita. Mathew Chandy [inset, right] was a lawyer with investment bankers UBS; Sameer Singh [inset, left] was a Rhodes Scholar with an M.Phil in law and a consulting job with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). But they were both looking for newer avenues of creative expression, and the result was Mooli’s.

Less than two weeks into its inception, the store has made its mark on the Soho scene as a casual, fun, inexpensive place with excellent and innovative Indian food. Mooli’s has received rave reviews in several leading London food review portals. S&M, as they have designated themselves on their website (better than M&S, they claim) have come up with several promotional ideas to keep their customers returning, all of which involve free food and are therefore hugely successful.

So if you’re in London on work or at university, and are looking for an affordable Indian restaurant with great food and a friendly atmosphere, don’t forget to drop in at 50 Frith Street, Soho.

Gambler, entrepreneur and rebel, Sameer Singh converses with Bar & Bench on the story behind Mooli’s, his reasons for forging a different path, and his aspirations.

How it all began…

About two or three years into law school, in 1999, a couple of friends and I started Law School Tutorials and lawentrance.com. That was my first taste of business, and it was fun and exciting. I did that for a few years, until I graduated, and then, when I got the Rhodes, I sold my stake in the business and went to Oxford. So I had a bit of money- not much, just a bit, but certainly enough to travel around Europe. At Oxford, I did the BCL and the M.Phil, but I started focusing more on the philosophy of law. I learnt a lot, but I was beginning to realize that I didn’t want to be a lawyer, full-time at least. I’d done some internships, and I knew I’d be a decent lawyer, but it wasn’t my calling, and I wouldn’t have been happy pursuing it.

So I decided to apply for some marketing/sales positions, and in the UK you can do that; it doesn’t really matter what your undergraduate or graduate degree is, they’re happy to take you on [as a trainee], as long as you are willing to start at the bottom. I applied to Proctor & Gamble, Google, and some consulting firms as well and finally took a job with the Boston Consulting Group, who now recruit directly from NLS. I was hired as a consultant and because I had a couple of graduate degrees, I entered not at the most junior level, but one higher than that. It was a great learning experience and I learnt a lot- my business school was basically BCG. But as a consultant, you don’t make the big decisions yourself, you don’t create anything, just generally advise, and make a bunch of slides. So after about two years at BCG, I decided to quit my job last April.

The idea behind Mooli’s

The idea for Mooli’s probably started in Oxford, because the food in Oxford was pretty average, and it got me wondering why there was no good Indian food; I did some follow-up on the lunch options, follow-up on the chains and found that there’s basically everything for every other cuisine- you’d get Japanese fast food, Japanese on-the-go, you had Mediterranean on-the-go, but you just didn’t have a successful Indian on-the-go chain which was crazy, given that the on-the-go food market was evolving really fast and Indian food is super popular here. Indian food is to the British what Mexican food is to the Americans, so it was weird that there was nothing.

After I quit my job at BCG, I travelled for a month- I visited Japan with my girlfriend, and when I came back, I realized I had to make some money, so I started playing online poker, which I’ve become quite good at, and so I survived in London on my poker earnings.

Around this time, I also started working on the idea of Mooli’s- I went to India a couple of times, I met a chef in London, slowly developed the idea, and in September last year, I met Mathew Chandy.

The S&M partnership

Mathew was one year above me in law school, and his wife Vrinda was my classmate at NLS and we’re good friends, so I’ve known them for a long time. Matthew’s story is slightly different, actually, he’s been a lawyer for eight years in London- six years with Linklaters and two years with UBS, so for him to switch was a big deal. At first, he was just helping out, so we worked together, and then this year, in January, he decided to join full-time, so we became business partners. I think he enjoyed being a lawyer, but he was also looking for a different challenge where he could create something. He’s a big foodie- we both are, we’re really, really passionate about food, about creating something special, so that’s why we’re a good team, and that’s why Mooli’s is happening.

We came up with the name Mooli’s because we just wanted one word that would be friendly and sassy, without the usual connotations; if you take any other word like masala or spice, you end up just becoming a curry house and we’re not just a curry house- even our design is very minimalistic, it’s like Mooli’s are old Delhi meets Tokyo.

Moolis from the Moolita

We were doing the usual thing required to start a business, raising money, getting a loan, and then we got really lucky, we found a great place in Soho. Our dream was to make a really great product- so we’ve come up with a roll or a wrap that we call a Mooli, but it’s actually quite different from anything you get anywhere- even in India, you won’t get a roll like this, ever. For example, there’s one with Keralan beef, salsa, raitha and lettuce, all rolled in a roti- you won’t even get that in India. Our wraps are all full of flavor and very Indian, but with a twist- for example, our cumin potato and asparagus wrap and our Goan pork with pomegranate salsa.

We wanted good bread for the moolis, but the labour costs were too high to make fresh rotis by hand. So we ended up actually getting a machine from San Antonio, Texas, which flattens doughballs, and we call it a moolita, and now we have fresh bread in our store. You tell that to people here, and they think you’re crazy because who does it here? Regardless of Indian food or Mexican food, in an on-the-go setting, to have a machine that churns out fresh bread is just amazing. I’d gone to play the World Series in poker this year because I’d won an online package, so I was going to Vegas anyway, and I stopped over in Texas on my way and saw the machine, and then we bought it. I got busted at the World Series though, all I got was a T-shirt.

Whatever happened to Sameer the lawyer?

I don’t regret not pursuing law. At NLS you get a big flavor of it- I did four internships, one at trial court, one at a firm, I clerked for the Chief Justice, so I had some exposure, and in that time, I was pretty sure that the only thing I’d have liked to have done was probably go to court. And in India that’s pretty tough, so although it would’ve been nice, it wasn’t my dream, and I think you have to really want it to be able to do that. I think you should just go for the experiences that you want- I mean, with Mooli’s, who knows? It could fail in six months, or we could have 20 in five years. So I think joining BCG was the right choice for me, because it gave me a broad skill-set and now I feel much more comfortable in the business world because of those two years.

My legal education has been helpful, in an interesting way. They tell you in law school that they teach you how to think like a lawyer, and I think that’s the part that stays with you. I studied law for seven years, and that has helped me to see issues clearly and have a very structured thinking process. Of course, in business, there are legal issues, like the lease document and tax issues and shareholders agreements and our legal education came in useful there. But more than that, I think that it helped me become who I am and shaped my thought process.

Branching out, breaking in and forging a new path

I think law graduates in India mostly stick with the practice of law due to a combination of expectation and reality. When I graduated from law school in 2002, I was 22, and if I hadn’t gotten the Rhodes and I was still in India, what would I have done? Where could I have gotten a job? I couldn’t have gotten a job at Proctor & Gamble or at BCG, because they were hiring MBAs. In India, basically, everyone who wants to be in a business stream is doing an MBA. It’s much harder to move between streams, though I think people have done it. But I think it requires more determination than it would in the UK. I know seniors of mine from law school who have switched, and done MBAs, and it can be done if you really want to. I think we were lucky to study at a place like NLS which offers you a great education, and the opportunity to go to other great schools. I think I got very lucky because I got the Rhodes which allowed me to go and study at Oxford, and gave me to opportunity to work at BCG.