Every week, we bring you cool success stories. All of our participants have one thing in common: they are successful and they did it themselves.
Meet Bekhruz Abdullayev, a participant in the Integrated Rural Development Project / TRIGGER and founder of Cafe House, the next hero of our “success stories” rubric.
Behruz began his entrepreneurial journey, an ordinary assistant in the cafe “Visol”, and now has six years of experience in the restaurant business.
Our participant told about his first project, which failed, the way he survived the pandemic crisis and shared tips on business development.
Read the full interview below:
- Why did you decide to become an entrepreneur? How did you come up with the idea of creating a project?
My first project was called “Lavash”, to open it I went to Uzbekistan and trained as a cook and simultaneously worked as a barista in another cafe. This project failed 4 months after its opening where I invested 38500 thousand somoni. At that point my friend, mentor Firdavs helped me and suggested opening a cafe in the form of “Parking”. I did not know about such cafes and considered it as a novelty and decided to open this cafe. Then I borrowed money from all my relatives to open it and that’s how it came to be – “Cafe House”.
Currently, we do take-out catering, catering and juices and cocktails.
2. What have you gained from participating in the Integrated Rural Development Project / TRIGGER events?
This project opened my eyes to the fact that it is possible to develop where you want and where you know.
3. What is your project about? What are the future plans of your project?
We had three outlets before and were to open a fourth, but the pandemic broke us.
We survived thanks to persistence, teamwork, and loyal employees.
In the future we want to expand in the city, open a point in Dushanbe, it is necessary to work out this moment and assemble the team.
4.Your advice to aspiring entrepreneurs?
My advice to new entrepreneurs is not to start a business on credit, there should be an 80/20 ratio, 80 – your investment, 20 – credit. You should understand that the first 4 months will be difficult and brutal, but the next months you will come out in profit.
This interview was conducted with the financial support of the European Union and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).