{"id":3021,"date":"2011-11-17T15:22:15","date_gmt":"2011-11-17T15:22:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/magazines\/vanderbilt-business\/?p=3021"},"modified":"2017-08-08T16:00:28","modified_gmt":"2017-08-08T16:00:28","slug":"pressure-cooker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/pressure-cooker\/","title":{"rendered":"Pressure Cooker"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure style=\"width: 400px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Bappa Mukherji\" src=\"https:\/\/magazine.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/legacy\/2011\/11\/b-mukherji-400x300.jpg\" alt=\"Bappa Mukherji is the CEO of Gics Foods, which packages food into convenient microwaveable retort pouches.\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bappa Mukherji is the CEO of Gics Foods, which packages food into convenient microwaveable retort pouches.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Ashoke \u201cBappa\u201d Mukherji is no stranger to pressure. Soon after graduating from Vanderbilt with both an MBA and a law degree, he was thrust into one of the more challenging roles a budding young attorney could ask for\u2014sitting second chair in a first-degree murder trial. It was his first trial ever.<\/p>\n<p>When asked about the stress he was under, he laughs, \u201cIt could have been worse. At least I wasn\u2019t the one on trial.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mukherji spent the ensuing years at a Nashville law firm, where he concentrated mostly on mergers and acquisitions. Advising clients on these deals suited his Owen School background, but he always wondered what it would be like to \u201cmove to the other side of the table,\u201d as he puts it, and go into business for himself.<\/p>\n<p>In 1997, with the help of two business partners, Mukherji did just that, launching a startup that manufactured recycled toner cartridges. That idea eventually blossomed into Guy Brown Products, a Brentwood, Tenn.-based office products distributor that had revenue close to $200 million in 2010. Mukherji served as CEO of the company until he stepped down last fall.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt Guy Brown we differentiated ourselves from competitors by focusing exclusively on selling to large, geographically dispersed organizations and doing it better than anyone else,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s similar to what I\u2019m doing today\u2014studying the market and figuring out where our company has room to operate.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The company he\u2019s referring to is Gics Foods, a food packaging business in Greenville, S.C. Appropriately enough, this latest venture is all about pressure\u2014albeit a different sort from what Mukherji is used to.<\/p>\n<p>Under his guidance as CEO, Gics packages food into retort pouches, which are plastic laminate and metal foil containers that can withstand the high temperature and pressure used to cook what\u2019s inside them. Convenient microwaveable bags of rice are just one example of this growing technology that\u2019s revolutionizing not only how food is preserved but also how it\u2019s prepared.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re the first company focused solely on retort packaging,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s what makes\u00a0us stand out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That, and of course, a bit of pressure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ashoke \u201cBappa\u201d Mukherji is no stranger to pressure. Soon after graduating from Vanderbilt with both an MBA and a law degree, he was thrust into one of the more challenging roles a budding young attorney could ask for\u2014sitting second chair in a first-degree murder trial. It was his first trial ever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341,"featured_media":10666,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[41,21],"class_list":["post-3021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","tag-fall2011","tag-submain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3021"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8805,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3021\/revisions\/8805"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}