Santosh Manchala, who formed weight loss firm, Sabka WellnessOn, has came up the hard way. Manchala once worked as an office boy for a meagre salary. After dropping out of school after Class 10 and working as an office boy/storekeeper for a tractor showroom at a salary of Rs 1,500, Santosh Manchala chose to educate himself, find better employment, and relocate to the United States, where his earnings increased to Rs 1 crore per year.
Now, the 35-year-old has returned to Hyderabad, where he has established Sabka WellnessOn Pvt. Ltd. It’s a weight-loss firm that provides diet meals to its customers. His path from the small village of Peddapalli in Telangana, where his family was thrown into a terrible financial crisis when his father’s business suffered massive losses, forcing him to drop out of school and begin working, to where he is now is defined by pure hard work and dedication. According to Santosh, the WellnessOn kitchen is located in Gachibowli and can handle 300 orders each day, providing breakfast, lunch, and supper. Meal plans cost Rs 10,000 for lunch and dinner, and Rs 12,000 for breakfast and supper.” Since their inception in April, they have enrolled 37 customers. They increased their revenue from Rs. 20,000 in May to about Rs 2.5 lakh by September. Santosh used his resources to invest Rs 75 lakh. Two of his NRI buddies had also contributed Rs 75 lakh to the venture. WellnessOn’s workforce consists of 12 culinary employees and six corporate office employees. The firm just released its wellness snacks, which help in weight loss and are now available on Amazon and Flipkart.
Despite being born into a wealthy family, Santosh’s life took a turn for the worst when his father, Rajendra Manchala, who was in the private finance and chit fund industry in Peddapalli, incurred losses of Rs 80 lakh and was forced to sell all of their assets to cover the losses. Suresh Manchala, his father’s younger brother, assisted him in enrolling in a two-month course in computer hardware engineering.
When Varaprasad persuaded Santosh to pursue his studies, he enrolled in an open institution for B.Com and graduated in 2007. His salary had risen to Rs 5000 at this point, and he supplemented his income through computer repair and service. Varaprasad urged him to relocate to Hyderabad and search for better opportunities now that he was a graduate. Santosh attended numerous interviews in Hyderabad but was not hired due to his weak communication abilities. Santosh returned to Hyderabad in 2008 and found work at a BPO, where he provided customer assistance to foreign customers on computer hardware difficulties for a salary of Rs 8,500.
He was at the firm for around 18 months before leaving to pursue an MBA (Finance) at Swami Vivekananda PG College in Secunderabad in 2010. Santosh worked part-time in a variety of places while studying. He claims that he has worked in a variety of settings, ranging from a catering company to a supermarket. He completed his MBA in 2012 and landed a position as an associate trainee at Bank of America, earning Rs 10,000 per month. While working there, he participated in a short-term Oracle application course, which altered his life dramatically. He began working as a software developer at AppLabs in 2013. He joined Triniti Corporation in 2014 with a monthly salary of Rs 1.2 lakh, and in October of the same year, he was offered an onsite job in San Diego, California.
The US assignment came with a salary of USD 85,000 per year. Three months after relocating to the United States, the client for whom he worked was bought by another firm, and he lost his job. Santosh joined Weight Watchers in 2017, and his annual pay increased to Rs 1 crore. When Triniti requested Santosh to return to India, he stayed in the US and started an IT consulting business, charging customers USD 100 per hour. He went across the country and worked in seven different states. Back in the US, in September 2017, he received an offer from Weight Watchers as a Business Analyst with a salary of USD 143K, which converted to INR 1 crore, his biggest pay ever. After a year of working there, Santosh began to experience extreme tiredness and frequent illness. That’s when he joined Weight Watchers, his own company’s weight-loss program. He was able to correct his health problems and began to feel lighter and more energized. In January 2020, he arrived in India for a three-month vacation, but he was unable to return to the United States as planned because Covid- related travel restrictions went into force in March.
As a result, he began working from home. It allowed him to concentrate on his own initiative, which he started in April of this year. He explains, “I was getting what I earned in the US, even while working from here. At the same time, my wife gave birth to our second kid, Sai Satva, and I was able to take 90-day paternity leave. It allowed me to concentrate even more on the project.” Working from India turned out to be a boon, and he left Weight Watchers in August of this year. Santosh Manchala intends to build three additional Sabka WellnessOn locations in Hyderabad by the end of the year. He said his company plans to open three additional branches in Hyderabad before the end of this year.
