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Dipali Sikand never takes no for an answer—neither does she give it. She believes in new challenges, vibrant experiences and scaling heights that are out of the ordinary. With a childlike demeanor and a gregarious laugh, it’s no surprise that she made a smooth transition from HR to hospitality, both being industries that require good networking skills.

Naturally, then, her career has been rather vivid, spanning politics, HR and now business as the Founder and Chairman of Les Concierges Services Pvt. Ltd. and, more recently, Kyra, India’s first supper theater. Both ventures are unique and the first of their kind.

“Growing up in Kolkata exposed me to a potpourri of experiences, and that’s where my initial confidence stemmed from,” says Sikand. After graduating from St. Xavier’s College, she worked for three years with the Youth Congress in Mumbai where she dealt with projects on women’s and social issues. It wasn’t long before Sikand realized that politics wasn’t her forte—people were.

So, she spent the next eight years in the HR department of the ESSAR Group and even moved with the company to Bengaluru in 1996 when she was expecting her first child. Next on the cards was Singapore, her first international offer with a telecom company. Les Concierge was practically born as a kitchen table concept during this phase, because coping with the demands of home and work in a city with no help left Sikand gasping for breath. “[The business idea] evolved from necessity,” she says.

Sikand took a sabbatical from work in 1997 and returned to India to experiment with this idea—and there was no looking back. With a meager sum of Rs.5,000 as initial investment, Les Concierge was launched in 1998 with her building’s watchman as its first employee! The rest of her crew started trickling in from personal and professional networks. The firm provides enterprise workforce and customer management solutions and services that help companies drive increased profitability.

“The concierge desks disallow employees to leave office during working hours and enjoy an errand-free weekend,” explains Sikand. So, for instance, do you want flowers delivered to your girlfriend? Need to pay your electricity bill? Want movie tickets on the first-day-first-show? Need to explore your travel options? If your company has a Les Concierge desk, all of this and more becomes possible.

Once convinced of the proposition, Sikand’s first client, Mascot (now called iGate) let her experiment with its 1,500-odd employees. This period coincided with India’s much revered IT boom; the Wipros, IBMs and Infosys had all sprung up by this time and had, within a month, become Sikand’s clients. The relatively small HR industry back then allowed news to spread like wildfire.

“The sector was hot, and every hour of an employee’s time was money,” Sikand explains. Moreover, having spent a significant number of years in HR, she knew the credentials of a good employee meant only two things: productivity and cost to company.

“Each employee has a hidden cost allocated for using company resources for personal use, too,” she states. Looking at this as a golden opportunity, Sikand took on every service that came her way. And each request taught her company how to execute a job. “A concierge has the most value when no one else can fulfill it,” she feels. That meant never saying no even to the strangest of requests. For instance, Sikand once obliged a client who wanted to send his wife two ducks on her 22nd birthday! “It’s not just about utility, but the entire experience… and that extra flavor,” she says. And so, Les Concierge grew as all these companies grew.

Between 2002 and 2003, her company began taking a more concrete shape with separate business verticals. As one of the largest services demanded was travel, Wand, Les Concierges Travel was started as a separate business division catering to the intricacies of planning a perfect dream vacation. A year later, Ms. MoneyPenny was launched—another vertical offering reception/first impression services as a packaged service. “People liked our front of office concierges so much that they wanted to poach them,” laughs Sikand.

At about the same time, Les Concierge Rewards was added, a unique rewards solution that helped enforce positive employee behavior; today, this vertical sells about 10,000 gifts a month through reward shops and websites, sourced from the company’s own network and design merchandize.

Till this point, expansion was on in full swing without any external funding. Les Concierge soon smelled success, though, thanks to the baron of the stock market, Rakesh Jhunjhunwala (of RARE Enterprise). Jhunjhunwala was the company’s first external investor, pumping in Rs.3 crore and making it financially secure. “We were the only true concierge service in Asia. [Rakesh Jhunjhunwala’s] investment helped us work on a profit model and focus on building each of our verticals,” explains Sikand.

With the necessary funds in place, Sikand decided it was time to cater to the uber luxury segment of the country as well, i.e., the high net worth customers of banks. This presented a huge untapped opportunity. Here, the services offered go beyond bill payment and proposals; it’s more along the lines of booking front row seats at major shows, making reservations at fine restaurants or exclusive hotel suites, or planning exotic travel packages.

Each one of these services is customized for the international card portfolio. “The mind-set of the Indian consumer is such that they believe a luxury brand cannot be Indian,” claims Sikand. Therefore, it required a separate brand to reflect an international product: Club Concierge. First set up in Dubai and Singapore, the objective was to create a platform to cater to all Visa, Mastercard and Amex clients across Asia.

Today, it has a multi-contract with Visa for its entire CEMEA (Central Europe, Middle East and Africa) region. And it’s no surprise, since Sikand had her facts in place to know the business would do well. Korea has the largest number of card holders in the world, but it didn’t have a single concierge service before Les Concierge entered. In the West, by contrast, about 30–40 percent of card-holders use concierge services.

Club Concierge now has about 20 different nationalities heading this vertical across the globe. It gets 40 percent of its business from travel services, 30 percent from dining, and the balance from shopping and entertainment services within the Club Concierge division. “This vertical required us to be in constant communication with the client,” says Sikand. Given the huge potential it holds, she plans to start this in India in the near future as part of the APAC region. This vertical is expected to contribute a good part of the company’s top line growth in the next financial year.Currently, the Les Concierge division, the flagship product, accounts for 55 percent of the company’s annual revenues.

Unaffected by the recession, Club Concierge was, in fact, used by her clients to retain customers. But a business with six independent verticals was not enough Sikand—her mind was constantly toying with new concepts. Kyra was a natural corollary of Sikand’s desire to do something off-beat yet again coupled with the limited entertainment options in Bengaluru.

Kyra, a theater with dining options, has a slew of performances across varied art forms through the week. “It has a slightly philanthropic twist to it, as we don’t charge the artists and earn our revenues from food and beverages,” says Sikand. With a stage well-equipped with light and acoustics perfect for music and theater, artists have the space to perform in the heart of the city, keeping ticket sales as their own earnings of the night.

Even in a city like Bengaluru that’s heavy on moral policing and curfew timings worse than Cinderella’s, Sikand has managed to escape all that with her impressive business prowess. How? She approached Esplanade, Asia’s certifying authority for the arts, fulfilled their criteria, and got Kyra
certified as a performing arts venue. This allows her to host live bands and dance performances from India, as well as artists from abroad.

So, does Sikand enjoy facing the music? You bet! “I’ve always chosen a tough path, with no benchmarks to equate myself with,” she says. “Success for a woman entrepreneur depends on you ability to be gutsy,” she adds.
‘Gutsy’ might just be a mild term here; after all, not everyone can climb Mt. Everest at age 15, or get the city’s police commissioner to sing on stage!

Quick Facts

Les Concierge:
• Launch date: 1998
• No. of employees in year 1: 60
• No. of employees till date: 900
• Initial investment: Rs. 5,000
• Revenues FY 08-09: Rs. 45 crore
• Revenue target FY 09-10: Rs. 75 crore
• No. of clients: 450
• No. of concierge desks: 800 (across 16 cities)
• Revenue model: Monthly fee from client, 5-year contract

Kyra:
Launch date: May 2009
Investment: Rs.3 crore
average monthly  turnover: Rs.45 lakh
Revenue target FY 09-20: Rs.4 crore
Revenue target FY 10-11:
Rs.7-10 crore
Seating capacity: 225 (theater) + 112 (dining)

©Entrepreneur March 2010

Tags:
Dipali Sikand, hospitality, HR, Kyra, Les Concierges Services