“People often ask me why I would take on a second job after spending an entire day running a business.
It’s a fair question.
I’ve been in the IT industry since 1997 and moved to Hyderabad in 2001, when the city’s tech landscape was just beginning to take shape. For the past 14 years, I’ve been running CMD Infotech, a company that manages the infrastructure and networks businesses rely on 24/7. Earlier in my career, I was part of the team that worked on the digital infrastructure for one of India’s most visited pilgrimage destinations. My professional life has always been about building systems that people can depend on.
But long before any of that, I was a boy growing up near Bhimavaram in Andhra Pradesh.
Millets were a regular part of life in our home. We grew up eating Ragi Sangati and Jonna Rotte without giving them much thought. They were simply the food on our plates.
As the years passed, I watched Hyderabad change rapidly. Around the same time, I noticed how much our eating habits had changed too. The grains I grew up with had become far less common in everyday meals. I found myself thinking more and more about the food I had grown up eating and whether there was a way to bring it back into everyday life.
My first attempt at entering the food business didn’t work out. It was disappointing, but years in IT had taught me an important lesson. When a system fails, you don’t abandon it. You find the problem, learn from it, and start again.
Two years ago, I opened a Millet Chef outlet in Nagaram, serving everything from traditional millet dishes to modern favourites like millet pizza.
Today, my wife is my biggest support in this journey. She opens the outlet every evening, and after finishing my office work, I head there. From 6 PM to 10 PM, I trade meetings and computer screens for customer conversations and food counters.
The most satisfying part isn’t running two businesses. It’s watching people enjoy something that was once an ordinary part of my childhood.
My days begin with technology and end at a food counter. Somewhere between the two, I found my second shift.”
— Ram Krishnam Raju