Humble start
Their unanimous thought that they should do something to lend professionalism to the completely unorganized flower retail industry in India led to the formation of Florista in 2003. To start up, the Dalvis invested `30,000 and started operations from a small loft above Sameer’s office in Parel, Mumbai.
The idea was to run a floral design boutique, have exquisite designs, source exotic flowers from all over and maintain high delivery standards. “We got a karigar from the Dadar flower market and hired one delivery boy. We also got a lot of international reference material for flower design and styling. We asked our friends and family to try our service,” says Dalvi, MD and CEO, Florista on the humble beginnings.
Innovating, Dalvi got the company’s delivery boy to wear clean white gloves and a neat and tidy uniform, which acted as a live promotion model for Florista wherever he went.
People would stop him and ask him what company he represented and where he was going with the flowers. Dalvi’s next move was to target corporate clients. “We started asking corporates to send flowers to their clients with a thank you note,” she says.

On the retail route
The company started gaining popularity and soon they realized that demand was far outweighing their ability to service it. “It was difficult to manage with just one delivery boy,” says Dalvi. Keeping in mind their primary target audience of corporate customers, Florista also opened its first retail outlet in High Street Phoenix in 2003.
“High Street Phoenix was an upcoming destination at that point. Lower Parel was full of corporate offices and it made sense for us to be there,” says Dalvi. The company leased 150 sq. feet space and operated the outlet from 2003 to 2006.
In FY 2004-’05, Dalvi put in an additional `2 lakh to sustain the business. She hired a shop manager and expanded the team. She also sourced several special decorative elements from Kolkata to complement the floral arrangements in the initial phase. But in 2006, the company moved out of Phoenix.
“The rentals had increased by about five times during this phase,” says Dalvi.
Though the outlet catered to several walk-in customers, the repeat orders over the phone dented the in-shop operations. Another persistent problem was the Indian office habit of delaying vendor payments. “Slowly and steadily, our outstanding amount started going up. We were also forced to write off some bad debts,” says Dalvi.

Smooth operations
Florista’s biggest lesson at this point was that the company needed to separate its call center and retail operations. The company leased a new space and moved its workshop and call center there. To strengthen its retail presence, the company leased a 600 sq. feet space opposite Phoenix and turned that into its flagship store in Mumbai.
By 2006, Dalvi had also decided to call it quits from her IT career and take charge of the business. “We revamped operations in 2007. We now had separate calling numbers for our retail outlets and the call center. We also started accepting payments through credit and debit cards, and fund transfers. We also developed an order and customer database,” she says.
Results followed. Their order execution time reduced, operations became smoother and the bad debts disappeared from the books of accounts. On the retail front, the company had introduced the kiosk format for the first time at Inorbit mall in suburban Mumbai in 2006.
This kiosk changed the company’s growth plan. Inorbit was the largest retail mall in the country for a long while and attracted visitors from all over India.
“Inorbit made us visible to a national audience. We started getting franchise enquiries from cities like Bengaluru and Jaipur,” says Dalvi on the reason for her taking the franchise route to grow.

Code orders
Today, the company operates 11 owned outlets and 22 franchise ones. It hopes to run 150 outlets by the end of 2013 through the franchise channel. It had its own share of lessons in this space as well. “Our franchisees have to start from ground one but we started from ground zero. We have tried, failed and then proved ourselves. When our kiosk in a Baroda mall didn’t work, we incurred a loss of `3 lakh,” admits Dalvi.
During the revamp, the company also decided to hire a full-time floral designer. In addition, Dalvi often had teachers from the Sogetsu School of Flower Arrangement (a philosophy of Japanese origin) coming in to train her karigars.
“A floral designer adds immense value in terms of design, style and color,” emphasizes Dalvi.
The designer also helped the company to code its standard floral arrangements. “Having a code meant the franchisee knew exactly what had to be done when we passed on an order for a particular code to him,” she adds.

Global stake
Dalvi went shopping for funds in 2010 and realized that no banks were willing to fund her as she did not have any assets to show and flowers as a product are perishable. “It was difficult to convince the VCs also due to the restraints of our business,” says Dalvi.
Finally, the company found a taker in Karuturi Global Limited, a leading global producer of cut roses with operations spread across Ethiopia, Kenya and India. Karuturi Global bought a 58 percent stake in Florista in January 2011.
Manoj Kumar Agarwal, CEO, Indian Operations, Karuturi Global Limited, says, “While our focus has been to grow our production business, we thought it is prudent to partner with a company which understands retail well and has good design capabilities.”
He adds that the company is looking at this business to evolve over the next seven to 10 years.
Karuturi is looking at investing in Florista outlets at airports and large public places. “We also want to start a full-fledged events division soon. There is a lot of scope for catering to corporate events like inaugurations, product launches, and weddings,” says Dalvi.
For 2012-’13, the company’s focus is going to be on strengthening its online presence and web operations. Dalvi is happy in her role as entrepreneur and knows that she has many more landmarks to achieve before bringing order to an industry often taken for granted on the streets.

Looking back
Born in Kolkata in 1976, Dewan’s family shifted to Bahrain when she was eight months old. Traditionally in the business of explosives, metal and mining, her father had acquired some limestone quarries in that country. After her education in finance and entrepreneurial management at the Wharton School of Management, Dewan joined Citigroup as an analyst in its corporate finance division.
She was always bristling with ideas, even carrying an ‘idea book’ around with her all the time. Her friends were sure she would start something of her own someday. And they were proved right. Quitting her job at Citi in 2000, Dewan decided to stay far away from the family business and thought of starting a dotcom company. However, after careful consideration, she decided to abandon the idea, opting instead to enter the brick and mortar industry.

First steps
Drawn to good aesthetics, Dewan started her first office with the equivalent of Rs.7.5 lakh in New York in 2000, designing floors, walls and lobbies for people in the area. Soon she realized there was a market for restoration, and entered that business. By the end of 2001, Dewan’s firm was clocking a turnover of Rs.7.5 crore. By 2004, Dewan spilt her company into two parts: KA Design Atelier which dealt with the designing aspect including prototyping, R&D and innovation at the factory level, while the other part dealt with the regular design work.

Checking in at T3
A couple of years ago, Dewan was on a visit to India when she realized there was an opportunity to tap into turnkey projects here, as many such ongoing constructions were taking a very long route to completion. “In the beginning of 2008 we pitched to GMR. Bramco [her family business] was already supplying to various projects in India but that never excited me,” says Dewan. “I had come on a holiday and read in the papers about the plans for T3. To be an entrepreneur one needs to have a brave heart, and the mind and stomach to complement it. The stomach is the largest part, but we often look at things realistically and do not realize how important the gut is. I never realized the true merit of instinct or gut feeling until I did T3,” she adds. The project meant so much to Dewan that she told her team that if it did not materialize, she would never look at doing business in India. Roping in experts from Bramco, she did not go through the process of sub-contracting. The tender was for all stone work for the airport, including interior and exterior cladding, interior and exterior flooring for the walls, lift lobbies, staircases and atrium. Once Dewan was awarded the project, additional work like the design for walls, lounges and the retail areas was thrown in.
The stone work started in late 2008, while the installations were started in late 2009. Around 800 workers toiled round the clock—most of them trained in-house—in order to meet the Commonwealth Games deadline.
“The challenge was not merely in the task of laying 1.3 lakh sq meter of stones in a project fraught with delays, in just 14 months. The real test was whether we would be able to maintain the highest aesthetic standards and blemish-less material consistency over the massive area,” reminisces Dewan. “We had to bore massive holes in the mountains of Saudi Arabia to mine 12, 000 cu. meters of the best quality granite to ensure the same texture and color variation throughout,” she adds.

All about Leela
Dewan’s tryst with India did not end with T3; rather it started with that assignment. She was soon given the responsibility to design a one-of-its kind stone paneling system for all the exterior stone work for the recently opened Leela Palace hotel at Chanakyapuri, New Delhi.
Today, the hotel boasts of having the lowest carbon footprint for stone used in such cladding work and the quickest installation method ever implemented for such a building. The panels incorporated an insulation system, reducing energy losses for the building. The system also meant that the client could save on wall thickness within the building. The paneling system was lightweight, providing minimal load on the building.  
Family friends for decades, the Nair family which owns Leela had roped in Dewan for the project. “There were two firms in the race, Xianen from China and Bramco. We decided to go with Bramco and are happy with the way the project unfolded. Dewan’s education and work experience abroad helped her bring a fresh style of work in the design. Her approach was very different from the usual Indian contractor’s; she was always open to the suggestions from our side, which she eventually delivered on,” says Vivek Nair, Managing Director and Vice Chairman, Leela Group of Hotels.
But what Dewan has been able to achieve will not show in the occasional condescension that seeps into business dealings. There have been times when the CEO has been sidestepped and aspects of construction have been explained to her managers instead.
However, she generally shrugs it off, preferring to earn her stripes. “Being a woman in this space is difficult. Initially it was very tough and every meeting that I went to would see me trying to prove my mettle in a male-dominated industry. I stuck it out and the Indian experience has made me much tougher than I ever would have been,” says Dewan.
Today, Kanika Dewan is firmly ensconced in the Indian market. With annual revenue last year from India being around Rs.200 crore (of which around Rs.150 crore came from the T3 project), Dewan expects to double her revenue this year to Rs.400 crore.
She has successfully bagged the design and construction work for the new Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, Mumbai, being developed by GVK and at the same time looks to enter the residential market in the country, which has higher margins. The India story is definitely shining nice and bright for this spunky lady.

Around 8,000 km from her home in outback Queensland, Australia-born Harrison traveled to India four years ago to head a six-month social welfare project in rural Tamil Nadu. The project involved living amongst the villagers and dealing with local NGOs.
Though she has traveled to a number of countries around the world and despite the cultural difference between India and Australia, Harrison claims that she felt a certain sense of homecoming when she visited India. “The warmth of the people here and their sense of humor is similar to what Australians have,” says Harrison. It wasn’t long before she decided that she would come back to settle down here.
After a short stint back in Australia for six months, Harrison moved to India in 2008. Having understood the opportunities in the larger social development sector in the country, Harrison decided to set up her company, Innovaid, working in this sphere.
Innovaid was started in 2008 in Mumbai to play an advisory role for companies who want to ensure that their philanthropic and CSR activities have a lasting impact on society.

Opportunity beckons
“There are many people who want to contribute to social development, are financially in a position to do so, but do not know how to go about it. After being exposed to a few corrupt NGOs, I realized that you could give your money to an NGO or donate money in the name of a social cause but there is no way to actually be involved in the process. So, you can never ensure that the resources actually reach the right people to bring about the expected results,” explains Harrison. She began by focusing on celebrities. “I realized that there are celebrities who contribute to a certain event here or there but there is no real focus to their activities,” she says.

Celebrity clientele
Harrison began her journey at Innovaid by bringing on the Steve Waugh Foundation as one of her first clients. Today her organization has amongst its clients Indian and Australian film personalities and sportsmen, including Brett Lee. Indian celebrities on her client list include Anupam Kher, Rahul Bose, Gul Panag, Abhinav Bindra, the Rajasthan Royals T20 cricket team and a member of one of India’s
royal families.
As far as companies are concerned, Harrison realized that while there were some which undertake philanthropic and CSR activities, there was a need to make the companies see the benefit in assisting social development to make the process sustainable. “NGOs speak a language that the corporate world doesn’t mostly understand and the corporates speak a language that the NGOs don’t get,” explains Harrison.

How it works
Innovaid works towards planning philanthropic and CSR activities for companies, ensuring that they get
lasting returns in terms of branding as well as improved employee satisfaction and retention.
Innovaid also helps celebrities set up and run foundations and also manages their philanthropic activities. The company also designs programs for existing foundations and helps develop campaigns for companies to help them get involved with an issue of social significance. After the celebrity identifies a social issue that he wishes to be involved with, Innovaid comes into the picture by identifying the most appropriate NGOs and institutions that the celebrity can work with.
The company then creates concepts that would add the celebrity value to the cause in an effective manner, while also ensuring that the celebrity is sufficiently and closely involved with the cause. Concepts and programs designed by Innovaid are in a range of segments like women’s issues and music therapy for Brett Lee’s foundation, Mewsic.
Client-speak
When Entrepreneur got in touch with the former Australian cricketer, Brett Lee was all praise for Innovaid. “I first met Harrison in India in 2008.  She was doing some work with the Steve Waugh Foundation which impressed me. We are like-minded people driven by the same passions: India, and making a difference to the lives of disadvantaged kids who live there,” says Lee.
He adds that Innovaid formulated a number of diverse programs which would make a lasting, sustainable difference in children’s lives. “We have four key areas of focus: Music for Healing, Music for Education, Music for Empowerment and Music for Advocacy. It is all about using music to heal emotional wounds and ignite that flame inside children, so they can rise above their current situation in life,” he says.
Lee has invested Rs.30 lakh in his foundation in India and its multiple programs. He is happy with the response to his programs, which he calls “fantastic.” Ask him if he will continue to let Innovaid run his foundation in India, and Lee says, “Yes. It is an association both parties value and I look at Innovaid as an extension of my company in Sydney.”
Reji Mathews, CEO, Thwack Sports, a sports goods manufacturing company, has been associated with Innovaid for the last four months.
Thwack, a company with Rs.60 crore turnover, wanted to invest a certain part of its earnings in setting up a foundation to help sports infrastructure and help people realize their potential through sports.
Harrison planned a set of programs for identifying sports talent in children who cannot afford sports training, and in spreading a culture of sports with Thwack. “I am happy with the strategy and planning. However, the programs only begin implementation this year,”
says Mathews.

Challenges faced
Harrison feels that her biggest challenges so far have not been the bureaucracy or finding the right people. “It has been a struggle to stay positive, face the challenges and find a support system in India,” she says.
Her start up costs weren’t too high. The only thing she invested in was a laptop and, a few months later, in hiring a few employees who were working out of her home in Mumbai.
Harrison has not looked for external funds yet since she is keen to retain her control over the organization.

Smooth run
Innovaid has made a turnover of Rs.1 crore and Harrison now plans to grow and expand the company on a much larger scale. “There is a whole list of celebrities and corporates I am yet to approach. So the scope seems immense,” she signs off.

First stitches
Kolkata-bred, this Loreto House alumnus finished her B.Sc Economics from St. Xavier’s College in 1990, and took her pedigree up a notch when she sought B-School admission in IIM Ahmedabad, never to look back. She has been associated with the apparel and retail industry from the time there was no real industry in this sector.
Her career began in 1992, when she joined Coats Viyella Plc (now Madura Coats) as a management trainee in the garment division, moving on to become brand manager for Van Heusen.
A seven-year stint in the apparel major brought her a gamut of opportunities and experience vis-a-vis launching and building brands.
“I was involved with the launch of Allen Solly that introduced the concept of Friday dressing, chinos and light garments in India. It was the first store where clothes were not sold in boxes,” she recalls. By the time she reached her last year at Madura Coats, Aggarwal had gone on to handle marketing services, including loyalty programs and other processes.

Designing Indus League
While a lot of this planning was going on at Madura Garments Aggarwal, along with some others (Sriram Srinivasan, Fazle A. Naqvi, Arun Srideshmukh, Kanchan K. Pant, Uday Kumar and Vineet Nair), came together to start a clothing company of their own and interestingly Indus League became the first firm, out of the IT sector, to be set up with venture capital funding. The idea was to launch clothing with an international appeal and the opportunity was to fill the gap in the market with smart casuals.
“People had already moved from tailormade clothes in their minds to readymade clothes,” says Aggarwal. This period also coincided with motherhood in Aggarwal’s life, so when Indus League started she took on more back-end roles, involving less travel. This meant back-end and IT systems, networks, supply-chain logistics, production planning and purchase.

Birth of two brands
Indus League started with Indigo Nation and Scullers as their first set of brands, both for men only to begin with when it hit the market in August-September 1999. While the latter, inspired from the sport of sculling, was patterned as smart, trendy casuals, clothes for work or leisure (but not denims) focussing on chinos and washed clothes, the former was branded formal wear for men targeted for the under-30 age group. “Both these brands were conceptualized, designed, manufactured and branded in-house right up to store identity,” she says. Three years later, Scullers introduced women’s wear too, targeting people in the 30-40 age group. Consciously to an extent, Scullers, since inception, got an international flavor thanks to imagery and brand positioning around it.
“People assumed it’s an international brand though we never claimed to be one,” Aggarwal quips. Both brands were launched south of the Vindhyas, as Aggarwal puts it, in Maharashtra and South India for starters, with the intention of expanding to rest of India progressively. In early 2001, Indus League got its second round of funding, this time from ICICI Ventures, the first being from Draper International and Dalmia Cement together.

Big ticket investment
In January 2005, Indus League became part of Future Group, which came in as a strategic investor and took over stake of the previous two investors. This catapulted the company into another league altogether as it gave Indus League firm financial bandwidth to launch a host of new brands and expand aggressively.
“Our VCs were looking to exit, and the timing for an IPO wasn’t right so a strategic investor made sense as we would get distribution and critical mass,” highlights Aggarwal. Today, Future Group has a controlling stake in the firm.
Also, until then the apparel firm was functioning on a franchise model and on the back of the acquisition it changed its business model to company-owned and -operated stores. The reasons for this were manifold. First, this model across brands gave for better customer experience and lifted the bar in terms of store interiors as well. It also allowed the company to control all parameters which in turn gave it a competitive edge in the market. On the employee side, it helped retain staff better by having them on company rolls, thereby offering them a career as opposed to staying on the shop-floor forever. “We felt retail space is something we must invest in [long term lease], as our confirmed shelf space,” she explains. Every store needed average investment of at least Rs.1 crore to take care of interiors, stock, security deposits, and so Indus League retained only a couple of its franchised outlets.
Stores were about 800-1,000 sq feet in size, a format that remains till date and since malls were not a commons phenomenon then, they were all high-street fixtures. “We were very conscious about this route to expansion,” she affirms.
Once acquired, the firm was already selling in every Central Mall, growing fast too, as well as Pantaloons, another point of rapid sales. This, plus its own stores and Indus League had attained critical mass to cover all basic requirements in terms of mill minimum and back-end costs. Concurrently, co-founders began exiting, finding different things to do, and Aggarwal was the only one from the initial seven to stay on.

Wardrobe additions
Indus League was set to flush in a new set of brands to its portfolio and this phase saw quite a splash. In 2005 Urbana and Urban Yoga, two diametrically different lines of clothing were launched and in May-June of the same year it bought Mumbai-based Jealous 21 from an independent promoter, clocking in a small turnover of Rs.1.5 crore back then, which today generates a topline of Rs.50 crore. Its focus is niche westernwear for young college girls, 80 percent of the business coming from its collection of denims and T-shirts. Urban Yoga, on the other side of the spectrum, is centered around the ethos of yoga with a small range of accessories to include yoga mats and bandanas. The whole thought behind launching a range on these lines was an obvious opportunity since nobody had addressed this market till then. Plus, yoga as a practice was reviving and becoming big internationally. Today Urban Yoga, we are told, has the highest loyalty across all of Indus League’s brands.
By November 2007, the company became an official distributor for John Miller, classic and conventional formal wear for men, a Future Group brand, with a license to design and market it as well. Later in 2009, it got into an arrangement with lifestyle brand from Paris-Daniel Hechter, selling premium formal and casual wear, accessories, & home furnishings, which Indus League is slated to introduce early next year. “For now we started with men’s wear only as the market for high-end corporate wear for women is still small,” she explains.

Pin pricks
Needless to say, none of these brands were born sans challenges and for Aggarwal, apart from obstacles, they were paths to more profound learning. Remembering her Madura days as a management trainee, the first woman to be recruited by the firm in a managerial role, and not a common practice by others either, Aggarwal was given West Bengal as a region to handle while male counterparts were given metros. “Just to see if I could survive,” she laughs. “Sometimes I had to wait outside stores in the baking heat to take orders because shop owners wouldn’t let me in,” she recalls.
She remembers being the only woman in meetings for years on end. “I treated myself as just one of them, and so perhaps they too treated me the same way,” she notes. Aggarwal’s non-belief in women’s liberation, as a philosophy, supported her stance. For her, performing at the workplace was the only route to achieving success and a natural progression of the same.
“Earlier people were skeptical and uncomfortable, especially men, with a female boss,” she cites as a challenges on the work front. “Nor do I smoke, so I couldn’t hang out with people in corridors to get office gossip,” she exclaims. On the business side, coming from a multinational company adorned by old British culture, to an entrepreneurial setup brought in a gamut of issues never faced before.
“As management trainees, we were entitled to air-conditioned cars and five-star hotels. Suddenly as an entrepreneur you find yourself doing everything, worrying about which hotel to stay, factoring in costs,” she remembers. In the process she learnt new things from every mistake and strived to ensure the firm never committed the same mistake twice. Handling IT & logistics were interesting to her too, but since she didn’t possess the necessary background, Aggarwal had to learn everything from scratch.
She narrates a certain incident where they went horribly wrong with stock planning for the season. Such was the case that they had double the amount needed and no place to store extra merchandise. “We had to cover extra stock with tarpaulin because it was raining,” she says.
In another instance, she recalls going wrong in cutting ratios which resulted in thousands of size 44 shirts. “They just didn’t sell, don’t know if men’s sizes suddenly shrunk, but we had to re-cut all of them to smaller sizes and incurred a huge cost,” she says. “You can’t always research fashion, sometimes strange factors work in this industry, you need to take an intuitive call,” she points out.
Apart from this, there were lots of mistakes on the IT side, including internet bandwidth, a big deal those days when every additional kilo-byte counted. Though they had a common factory to manufacture apparel, portion of it was outsourced as job-work and the practice continues even till today. A factory meant labor issues.
“Earlier, if a notice came in my name I’d get paranoid, today everything comes straight in the CEO’s name and there is a lot of responsibility that signature brings,” she highlights. Constant feedback from customers and via store managers has been a ritual at Indus League.
The economic slowdown too brought in its own set of hurdles for Aggarwal and some decisions involved shutting stores, pulling back distribution from north India because malls in certain cities weren’t doing well, collecting payment became an issue, and more energy went in that than building the brand.
“We became a controlled retail organization and did away with outright selling; this helped us decide what to give customers,” she says.

Entrepreneur to employee
With Future Group’s acquisition Aggarwal was back to being an employee from an entrepreneur, as head of the supply chain. By the time they got in Jealous 21, she was back to front-end roles as well. “Allen Solly, in my mind, is still my brand. Future Group will be horrified if they hear it, since someone has been running it for 12 years now,” she quips. Controlling stake or not, Aggarwal’s role has been entrepreneurial since inception. In other words, flexible, allowing her to move across departments, bring in new processes, concepts, brands, extensions of portfolios, and keep evolving in the process with the ever necessary element of change to keep her going.
“My job has allowed me to accommodate my personal life, especially after I had children, given travel and timing constraints,” she says. Since she loves her job and delivers no matter what, it gives co-workers little room for complaints.
In the last five years, she has been spending time learning the financial side of the business. “Future Ventures is going to an IPO, and Indus League is its largest investment, so how we do reflects on how Future Venture does,” she points out.

Future Trends
Operating in an industry that’s growing at 13 percent CAGR according to estimates, expansion for Indus League involves both organic and inorganic growth. “The Indian apparel industry stands at par with international counterparts as far as seasonal styles go,” she notes. Though women’s wardrobes aren’t fully westernized, as compared to men’s wear, denims in particular have percolated across the society as universal attire.
Apart from new store openings, it’s heading back to the franchise model to penetrate tier II and tier III towns, a potentially huge market. “It’s not possible to visit these places frequently for site and store visitations,” she explains. Aware of the fact that small towns are not a women’s wear market yet, the company has begun by making inroads with men’s wear in cities like Jhansi, Kota, Jabbalpur in October 2011.
As far as other brands go, it plans to focus on accessories, knit and denim lines in Indigo Nation while simultaneously expanding Scullers’s product portfolio. “No more new brands now, we have enough on our plate,” she reaffirms.
Aggarwal is optimistic on the future of the apparel industry given that clothes aren’t a need, but impulse-based purchase.
“International wardrobes have high turnover, Indians are nowhere close, we’ve just started buying seasonally fashionable clothes,” she signs off.

She started working at age 13, by choice, because she wanted extra pocket money to buy music and other things that interest girls that age. Her craze to make an extra buck went on for nine years and with it her monthly income of Rs.300 grew proportionately helping her build up a savings bank of Rs.9 lakh. Today, at 38, Priya Kumar, CEO and Chief Facilitator, Priya Kumar’s Training Systems, has risen from tutor to motivational speaker, only because she chose to change her path at age 24. “I was always an unofficial speaker; whatever I learnt I taught,” she laughs.

With a typical middle-class upbringing in Chandigarh and working parents, Kumar’s journey has been fueled by her own aspirations to make it big. “I had rich cousins, everybody should have one person in the family who has it all; it increases your aspirations,” she quips. After nine years of tutoring, Kumar had built up a healthy savings kitty but was bored. Being a voracious reader, she had already begun to flirt with the idea of being a speaker at some conferences, and spoke on subjects that interested her like anti-smoking, relationships, as and when she was invited.

“It was a glamorous life, I was overwhelmed and so decided to do it professionally,” she says. Without a second thought she took the plunge and made her big career move from teaching to speaking. However, the next year didn’t turn out to be as glamorous; and life gave Kumar a reality check. “Nobody wanted to pay a young kid to talk,” she laughs. This one year was most crucial as it cost her everything: time, money, rejection, experience. It was a new life all over again, and Kumar had to learn everything from setting up an office, marketing herself as a professional speaker and run a business. “In India a lot of people do things without realizing they are entrepreneurs,” she points.

Back then, 1997, her firm was called Institute of Self Development and Kumar was the only employee in her own office, doubling up as fictitious secretary ‘Jennifer’ to fix appointments. “I was very professional,” she recalls. And that’s pretty much how she got her first client too, a big firm [name undisclosed], which Kumar unabashedly used since then as a promotional strategy to market her firm and bring in business.

To her liking the next six months were just that. At this juncture, she decided to get some formal training and attended every possible workshop across the globe. “I wasn’t impressed, each speaker was a bigger rip-off of someone else,” quips Kumar.

This was a turning point in Kumar’s vision for herself as a motivational speaker. Not satisfied, desirous of something more substantial she decided to take her skills a few notches higher and approached the Shaman tribes. “They carry original information,” she says. From then on her talks/workshops have been based on spirituality used in context of everyday life—business and personal. “Fire walk is a spiritual act, where you align your mind, body and spirit, I used it as a personal development tool to help people overcome fear,” she explains.

Kumar also aligned her motivational talks with stories of famous, successful people she’s personally admired from the world of business, entertainment, politics and sports. Today, she has a bagful of untold stories to narrate to her audience.

This all goes back to the time when she was teaching and took it on as a personal project. She was helping her niece deal with cerebral palsy and Kumar promised her anything she wanted provided she worked towards getting better. “She wanted to have dinner with [singer] Sonu Nigam,” recalls Kumar.

Three days before the deadline, Kumar had no choice but to keep her word. In utter panic and a few phone calls later she found out where he lived, wrote a letter and left it there. “He agreed, called me back and just like that it was done. So, if he could meet me, I felt that others would too,” she exclaims.

In eight months she ended up meeting 38 famous people. “I’ve learnt that every person you want to meet is just six phone calls away,” says Kumar.

Priya Kumar Training Systems, as she rechristened her firm later, offers motivation, team building and leadership products under the broad vertical of corporate training, all the time seeking to be the vehicle that gives corporate firms the technology to work on their aspirations.

Her training spans the entire hierarchical structure of an organization from top management downwards. “There is a big disconnect between leadership and team that follows their orders,” points Kumar in the same context.

“They are visionaries but not action guys, and a leader’s challenge is to get his people to move,” she adds. Alongside, her venture offers training workshops for individuals, key areas of which include personal goal breakthroughs, overcoming fears etc. “People in India have aspirations, my workshops help them find their own,” she explains.

Kumar’s style of training is metaphorical using examples that have worked for her personally, never head-on to a person’s situation. “My workshop is introspective. I am aiming at the period post the workshop people should use these learnings,” she emphasizes. The opportunity for such training programs, continues to grow, according to the entrepreneur.
Mumbai alone, she says, has 25 lakh companies that need training programs. “There is a big gap between training and supply. This shift has happened because people are competing in the global scenario, they need to be raised to international standards,” she adds.

Considering she is on the move 10-15 days of the month conducting workshops, with clients in 17 countries, is a good enough reflection of demand. Besides, Kumar knows she’s been clever at marketing herself right from the start, passing the word around, through friends in other countries as well as her own showcase events.

“I’m a niche trainer, companies need to afford me, so my market is already cut on one side,” she states. Her closest competition, she feels, is ‘Art of Living.’

Having come this far in her entrepreneurial journey, Kumar realized any entrepreneur’s struggles, like her own, are no different from any successful person’s struggles. “The life an achiever lives is not an ordinary life,” she points out. Recently, she published two books, [I am Another You and License to Live] and has succeeded in being the author she always wanted to be, even when her father told her to become an astronaut.

©Entrepreneur May 2011

When the ‘designpreneur,’ as she calls herself, graduated from National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad in 1992 as a graphic designer with a specialization in films, she was determined that the qualification wasn’t going to be just an ‘art’ thing. “I was sure I wasn’t going to just design annual reports and logos,” she recalls. It had to be more, and for Manchanda, it meant applying design in unusual ways.

As the daughter of now retired major generals from the army, life not only gave her an opportunity to study and travel across India, but she received the conditioning not many are fortunate to experience, probably the defining force behind her dynamic personality. “My parents balanced work-life and worked for the nation; the value of enterprise was very much there in our family,” she points.

These traits were noticeable during her NID days. From organizing college festivals to running a city magazine called City Life, Manchanda understood what it took to start and run things. “My role was to meet people running small enterprises along with the ad guys on the pretext of a feature in the magazine. In the process, I had to get them to advertise as well,” she laughs.

Post graduation, Manchanda saw herself progress as a freelancer with a basket of diverse projects; from designing quizzes with famous quizmaster Siddharth Basu to sets for TV and films, working with veterans of the industry. Her stint in the advertising industry (1992 onwards) with Contract, New Delhi, for two years and later Mudra in Bengaluru, where she moved post marriage to Girish Raj (ex-VP McCann Erickson and now co-founder at Idiom), helped hone her mind to the value of ideas on the creative side. “I was always bridging space between copy writers, art directors and filmmakers and I continue to do that even today,” she points out. Despite her efforts, Manchanda wasn’t impressed with people’s commitment to their respective roles.

At this juncture, (1995), she met Bharat Bala, the man who made Vande Mataram, and who gave her a chance to design an eco-friendly office for him and from that her company Esign was born, run from a garage by three-four people with a focus on the environment and society. It grew organically, doubled in size every year, but Manchanda wasn’t satisfied. From then on, solely through word-of-mouth, Manchanda saw herself engrossed in projects starting with Bangalore Forward, India’s first Public Private Partnership (PPP), which was practically run out of her office, involving many Bengaluru luminaries as well as then Chief Minister, S.M. Krishna. “For three years, besides designing the elements of the movement, we worked with the city’s stakeholders to solve their problems and to engage the public by design,” she mentions.

Almost simultaneously, she had Manipal Group and Future Group as clients. The former’s businesses in health and education were running as fragmented parts, almost competing with each other, while the latter was only three Pantaloon stores down in the country. When Manchanda delved into Manipal Groups’ history, she learnt it was started by a man inspired by life. The path was clear, she decided to get back to its core, integrate the institutions with design and build a common identity for the group.

“Typically, design looks inwards, we were looking outward, open to learning and adapting from environment, and giving back as much,” she notes. The year 2005 was a defining year as her entrepreneurial journey took new form. Esign was working with Tessaract, run by Jacob Mathew, her senior of eight years from NID, on the Future Group account. Somewhere down the line, she noticed a missing link in articulation. Employees at Future Group did not understand what each brand/company stood for nor were they able to understand the founder’s vision. “Why doesn’t design think big?” asked Kishore Biyani, Founder and Group CEO, Future Group.

Luckily enough, Mathew and Manchanda saw eye to eye on the issue. They brought their commonalities together in the form of Idiom that year, as a design enterprise, with an investment of Rs.3 crore and Biyani as mentor-cum-investor. It developed as a model to help transform the ideas of entrepreneurs into successful new businesses with cultural relevance, inclusive prosperity and an in-built ability for rapid scale-up.

In six years, Idiom has worked with over 100 businesses at a success rate of over 80 percent. This means, eight out of 10 projects have managed to raise capital for scale-up and generated operating profits within nine months of prototyping. Idiom clocked in revenues of Rs.15 crore-Rs.18 crore in FY2010-’11, and the firm is a stakeholder to many of its clients.

The 41-year-old lives with her five dogs and has a three-year old daughter, Navami and a native home-stay in Hennur. Manchanda’s organization has grown from 35 to 200 designers with the same vision of creating enterprise and value for the country. How did she design her own success stream? With three basic mantras: Invest in the long-term with the right set of people, take risks, and demonstrate value. “Just do good work, think big and the rest will happen on its own,” she smiles optimistically.

Sonia’s Success Saga
• Designed the Future Group identity: ‘Soney ki chidiya’
• Was on the workshop committee for a seminal conference on ethnography in Japan
• Was the principal designer of a design and look program for Commonwealth Games 2010
• Launched Dream:in 2011, a four-day conclave on nation-building, with a focus on innovation and inclusive growth
• Featured among the 30 most powerful women in India by a reputed Indian magazine in 2006
• Launched Spread in 2007, a design education movement with workshops & classroom sessions to teach design and business students design practice and thinking

©Entrepreneur April 2011

Thus, for these women, who would switch on the TV only to follow soaps and movies and flip lifestyle magazines, to reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad and The War of Wealth, it has been more than just a change in the psyche.

“We now call ourselves homemakers with a difference,” laughs the vivacious Jyoti Wadhwa. A psychology graduate, Wadhwa refuses to divulge her age and, like a clever investor, is also cagey about disclosing her investment options. All she’ll reveal is that she not only takes care of her own investments but manages the entire family’s portfolio, too.

It wasn’t always like this. Married into a business family in Kolkata, she was soon caught in family life—until a friend told her about Millennium Mams. She was a part of the third batch of Millennium Mams, and now that her children are grown-up and settled, she devotes nearly five hours everyday to her work. From scanning macro news in financial dailies to tracking the market on channels and the Internet, Wadhwa is cued in for most of the day. “I get into sectors such as FMCG, banking, cement and sugar, which I know about and understand from what I see in daily life,” she says, adding that her Saturday revision classes with Millennium Mams keep her going. “I feel so young, probably because we still address ourselves as girls!” laughs
the lady.

An 18-year-old initiative started by Kolkata-based industrialist B. K. Dhanuka, Millennium Mams is a non-profit organization that imparts financial education to women. It now has chapters in Mumbai and Bengaluru as well. Wadhwa claims it changed her life forever. “I not only learned about the financial world, but I’m now a pro at understanding company balance sheets,” says Wadhwa.

She is not alone. The motley group of six women gathered at The Bengal Rowing Club represents just a few women who have found their life’s calling—being businesswomen and savvy investors—and all of them give the credit to Dhanuka and his organization.

Started with the aim of giving women financial education and know-how about capital markets, Millennium Mams has, in turn, made women more aware of how money makes the world go round. “Women’s emancipation has no meaning if they aren’t financially independent,” says Dhanuka. And gradually, once these women enroll themselves for a two-year course with Millennium Mams, they not only understand terms such as market share and inflation but also learn to handle money by investing in markets.

Says Shruti Goenka: “Married at 19, I was an extremely shy girl.” Not anymore. Today, Goenka, in collaboration with another friend, runs Nouveau, a hugely successful high-fashion exhibition and sales bazaar across the cities of Bengaluru, Delhi, Dubai, Kolkata, Mumbai and Hyderabad. “From being tongue-tied in front of people whom I didn’t know, to cutting smart deals, I have come a long way—and I only have Millennium Mams to thank,” says Goenka.

For others such as Ritika Kumar, it inspires them to become businesswomen in their own right. Married at an early age, Kumar found herself in a different city, without friends and a social life. But things changed once she enrolled for the course in 1995. After learning how to dabble in shares, Kumar became confident enough to start the city’s first standalone gym and spa called Add Life on Camac Street. She won’t tell how much she sold it for in 2008, and has now started Fresco, a company that offers high-end fine china and porcelain for the city’s clientele. “I learned how not to be sentimental about investments and stocks from Dhanuka and moved on once similar spas and gyms came up in the city.”

For Shradha Saraf, the classes came as a push in the right direction. A graphic designer, Saraf got married when she was 25. “When I had my daughter, I was at home, but soon felt like I was stuck in a limbo and wanted a change,” she says. Millennium Mams gave her yet another perspective to her work—finance. Saraf now has her own fashion label called K-Sara and has been organizing Cherry Orchard, an annual exhibition-cum-shopping event, in the city since 2008. She is now working on building her fashion label.

A former teacher, Aditi Chirimar, gave it all up when her sons were born. But that didn’t mean just sitting at home since she joined Dhanuka’s classes and pushed herself to understand the stock market—something that she initially found too stressful. The first one to grab a financial daily every morning, Chirimar has now put her knowledge to good use by helping her husband out in his tea and organic farming business. She considers marketing her forte and travels with her husband for client meetings and negotiations. “It’s a great feeling to know that my husband can rely on me to handle an aspect of business if he’s busy,” she reveals proudly. Tea tasting, though, is something she hasn’t yet learned to like.

But few people are immune to the tantalizing smell of fries and onion rings at standalone McCann’s outlets in Kolkata’s malls. The brainchild of 48-year-old Sangita Mehta, these outlets have met with such success that the company is replicating the model in other parts of the country, too. An institutional supplier of packaged foods in West Bengal, Mehta has taken her husband’s food division business from Rs.30 lakh to Rs.2.5 crore in a decade. A keen investor, Mehta re-jigged her entire family’s investment portfolio a few years ago. “From being someone who picked up a newspaper only to skim through the gossip columns to predicting a company’s quarterly results, it has been a long fruitful journey,” says Mehta. Dhanuka cajoles women like Mehta to pick up shares of a company they like, only so that they follow the market keenly. She laughs about how it was merely her dancing skills that had mesmerized her husband and his family before marriage.

Broadly speaking, it’s not just about how a body such as Millennium Mams has helped women find their financial groove. Dhanuka himself admits that it is all about a push and shove in the right direction. “I maintain that women make the best investors. The only thing that stands in their way is financial illiteracy,” he says. And once a woman gets a handle of money matters, it changes her entire personality. Dhanuka also suggests that there is no time as good to start as the present. “If you keep waiting for your children to grow up, you are only procrastinating,” he warns. The best part about being an investor is that you can follow your money even when you are in the kitchen. Time to take money matters off the backburner?

These savvy investors swear by:
1. Land
2. Gold—bullion and bars
3. Silver
4. Fashion industry
5. Food sector
6. Education sector

The fine print:
1. Never be sentimental about stocks.
2. Do your homework, find out about the company as much as you can, read its balance sheet, then invest.
3. Go for long-term investments.
4. If something doesn’t feel right with a company’s stocks, book your profits/losses and get out.

Next: More on Millennium Mams ->>>

Born in Samarkhand, Pakistan, to Chief Justice N.U. Beg and his wife, Husain had a privileged childhood. Her late father, whom she worships to date, imbibed in her a love for poetry and literature. Although fortunate enough to get a modern education, Husain was married when she was only 15 years old.

From becoming a mother at 16 to being considered a pioneer of ayurvedic beauty products in the world, Husain’s entrepreneurial journey has been equal parts fascinating, turbulent and exhilarating. After marriage, she moved to Tehran with her husband, Nasir Husain who was the Chief General Manager of the State Trading Corporation of India. Husain was soon bored by the drudgery of endless routine. She was convinced that if she was highly qualified in her chosen field—beauty—she could have the world at her feet. The gifted writer then started writing articles for the Iran Tribune to fund her way to leading institutions like Helena Rubinstein, Swarzkopf and Lancome, among others, where she trained in cosmetic therapy as well as cosmetic chemistry.

While studying in London, she was troubled by various reported cases of damage caused by chemical treatments. Husain says this changed the course of her life and career. “I wanted to find a natural alternative that was safe and without risks. And I was convinced that Ayurveda could offer the ideal answers to modern cosmetic-care,” she adds.

Returning to India after her training in 1971, she set up her first herbal salon in the verandah of her home in New Delhi, with an investment of Rs.35,000. Rejecting chemical treatments, she began to formulate her own products using plant ingredients and natural substances. Soon, word spread and Husain’s quaint little parlor was booked out. “At a time when the demand for the product is sustained through commercial advertising, I never relied on it. It wasn’t a conscious business decision. I simply relied on word-of-mouth and the fact that a satisfied client was the best advertisement,” recalls Husain.

There may have been no high-profile celebrity endorsers but the Shahnaz Husain Group’s name instantly evokes a picture of the lady herself. “My image is directly related to the brand because it has been built up unknowingly, in a very personal way. Very early in my career, I made it a point to reply personally to letters seeking solutions to skin and hair problems,” says Husain. Four decades later, she continues the practice.

The biggest challenge for Husain also turned out to be the turning point for the company. At the behest of Indira Gandhi, a close friend, Husain participated in the Festival of India held at Selfridges, London in 1980. Despite fierce international competition and financial constraints, the group sold out its consignment in three days, smashing the year’s cosmetic sales records.

Selfridges was suitably impressed and gave the company a permanent counter at the store. This was soon followed by Harrods in London, Galeries Lafayette in Paris and the Seibu chain in Japan. Shahnaz Husain had arrived on the global beauty scene.

Even as the international media started going gaga over her, Husain went on a crusade to popularize India’s herbal heritage. “My aim was to get India on the world beauty map. During the early years, I held seminars, spoke on Ayurveda and attended countless international beauty congresses,” she says.

Interestingly, Husain did not enter the Indian market till 1985. Her products were available at the Cottage Emporium and in her franchise salons. Husain says this was as a result of her being both anti-publicity and anti-shops.

Taking a leaf out of her own book of experience, Husain has also been encouraging housewives to open salons in their own homes to gain financial independence. After providing them with training, she gave them the Shahnaz Husain franchise and made it a point to attend all the openings. This move proved to be extremely successful and it was soon seen as a part of the brand image.

The franchise system, which originated thus, is now the basis for all ventures of the group; be it shops, beauty schools or spas. Operational in more than 100 countries worldwide, it’s no surprise then that Husain considers the franchise system to be at the core of the brand’s success. The Shahnaz Husain Group has over 500 franchise ventures in India and abroad. It has over 1,000 employees on its payroll and sees a 20 percent growth year on year. In all this, she is ably supported by her daughter Nelofar, who is the President of the company. Husain calls her “my best friend, counsellor and guide.” “I think early motherhood has its advantages. Nelofar and I grew up together, like two sisters,” she relates.

So what or whom does Shahnaz Husain consider her biggest threat? “The only threat is the problem of fake Shahnaz products being marketed by unscrupulous people,” she states. In order to retain its exclusivity, the group introduced sealed packaging and holograms.

It was and remains a hectic lifestyle but Husain is not complaining. If anything, she seems to revel in all of it. After all, she has managed to prove her detractors wrong over and over again. “That’s the beauty of entrepreneurs. They are focused and do what they have set their minds on regardless of walls that crop up,” she says. But she has no plans to rest on her laurels. In addition to extending the salons and spas on the franchise system, the Shahnaz Husain Group’s plans also include concentrated international branding.

With so much going on, does she get to take time off for herself? “I love to unwind by spending evenings with my family. Just getting out of the household and relaxing at a Barista, sipping cold coffee with muffins, are fine for me,” she says. And if time permits, the feisty and often child-like Husain expresses her thoughts by painting and writing poetry. “Deterrents come up in life but I have tried to meet them as challenges. If you never stop trying, you can’t fail,” signs off Husain. Words to live by indeed.

THE FACE OF AYURVEDA
* Shahnaz Husain represented India for the first time in the CIDESCO beauty congress in the late 1970s

* She became the first Asian to have her products retailed in western markets, by stores like Galeries Lafayette in Paris, the Seibu chain in Japan and Bloomingdales in New York

* She was invited early last year by U.S. President Barack Obama to attend the President’s Entrepreneurship Summit in Washington D.C.

* Harvard Business School invited her early last year to lecture on “How to create an international brand without commercial advertising or publicity”

* She received the prestigious “World’s Greatest Entrepreneur” award from Success magazine, becoming the first and only woman to win the award in 105 years

* As part of her corporate commitment to the physically-challenged, her institute provides free training courses to deaf, mute and blind underprivileged people

©Entrepreneur January 2011

But celebrity customers are no strangers to Poonam Soni, one of India’s top jewelry designers, who clients list reads like a veritable who’s who of the rich and the famous in India and many parts of the world too. “I don’t need to ride piggyback on any celebrity client’s name,” is her quick retort.

And that is not false ego or blind pride speaking, for Soni has built up a formidable business which really does not need any buffering. Soni today retails from India, U.S.A., Russia and a host of other countries; her brand is considered synonymous with the best jewelry pieces. She started with a seed capital of Rs.3 lakh, which was completely self-funded. She is unwilling to divulge current turnover or profit margins but judging by her popularity and the spread and reach of her brand, success has been coming to Soni for a long time now.

But the going has not been always smooth for Soni, especially the initial years. The Indian jewelry market, steeped as it is in centuries-old traditions, was very closed during the late 1980s and early 1990s when Soni started her business.
Married off at 18, Soni was always a bright student, a gold medalist from Delhi University. Her inclination and passion for jewelry designing led her to painstakingly learn the tricks of the trade without any institutionalized guidance. “Way back in 1989, when I started out, I believe I was the only one doing this. I don’t know of any other entrepreneur who started out in this trade. I learned through experience; it was a tough task but I had perseverance and the belief that people would buy jewelry as pieces of art and not just as an investment option,” recalls Soni.

She has a number of firsts to her credit, and has spearheaded a number of innovative measures in her field of work. Her brand, in one of the first instances in India, received patent rights. She has introduced concepts like bespoke jewelry and signature by appointment boutiques. Her jewelry has also been sold through auction houses with authenticity certificates. Her Monochromos collection was auctioned along with S.H. Raza and M.F. Husain paintings. She holds private shows for her clients abroad and in India and opened an office in New York in 1996. In all this, her clients have been her focus of attention.

“My task was to change the mindset of the Indian buyer who usually bought jewelry as an investment. To enjoy a piece of jewelry as a work of art… that is also important. I have introduced diverse materials in my pieces like malachite, shell, leather, burnt gold, crushed gold, as early as 1989 when I started out. At that time, such concepts and materials were unheard of,” says Soni.

She was vindicated in her choice of materials when her Greek and Egyptian style of jewelry caught the eye of Harrods in 1992 at the London fair.
Soni has her own production unit in Mumbai where jewelry is handcrafted. The diamonds are sourced from an Antwerp-based company and the precious stones are painstakingly sourced from all over the world. “I understand the need to feel comfortable and safe about the jewelry pieces you buy, so we give authenticity certificates, have patent rights, design registrations and trademarks,” says Soni.

“I started out by designing the interiors of my house, clothes and personal jewelry pieces. My jewelry pieces became popular amongst my social circle, thanks to the unconventional designs and orders began pouring in, most wanting replicas of these items, a trend that’s still in practice,” says Soni. She opened her first flagship store in 1992, in the busy Fort area of Mumbai.

In 1998, Soni went international when she opened offices in New York and Paris and held various private shows in Dubai, Paris and London. Her Paris office is supported by Richard Rasonbo, who was the marketing head for Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH) for 13 years. She has also designed for Takeya Gems in Tokyo.

With her daughters Kriti and Esha, who both share their mother’s passion and creative instincts for jewelry designing, the Poonam Soni brand has just got further enriched. “We are constantly innovating and creating something new, something special. I believe in Buddhist principles and hope that my work continues to do most of the talking for me and my brand,” signs off Soni.

Crafted to Perfection
• Soni is the first jewelry designer to design for the Miss India and Miss Universe franchise.
• In 2006, she was invited by Marc Jamet, LVMH Paris to open the ‘Incredible India Show’ in Paris.
• Soni is one of the only two designers to have ever showcased jewelry-art at the epic Burj Al Arab Hotel, Dubai. (Other two are Harry Winston and Chopard).
• She created India’s first painting-jewelry in collaboration with artist Laxman Shreshtha, securing a listing in the Italian Trends book as a Global Trend of 2009 along with Cartier and Tiffany’s.
• Her Gaudi Revived collection was inspired by Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi. Each piece of jewelry was accredited an official Spanish emblem by the Spanish government.
• Last month, Soni participated in an auction organized by Eco Art, a charitable institution for ecological welfare supported by Prince Albert II of Monaco where her jewelry piece was auctioned alongwith works of notable designers and brands.

©Entrepreneur December 2010