ENTREPRENEURS how make to it!
Who
says you need money to make money? Four entrepreneurs tell us how they dreamed
different, broke the rules, took the risks and struck it big
NINA LEKHI
The woman behind the bags
and accessories brand Baggit
M ANY STUDENTS are asked to stop
coming to class when they bunk too many lectures. Only that Nina Lekhi used
that year off to kickstart her own bag-making business at the age of 17 in
1984. “I had no idea I was going to be an entrepreneur,” says Lekhi. “Even now
I still see myself as a designer.”
Even her family had difficulty
grappling with her work. “My father would ask me, ‘Why are you doing all this
when you’re eventually going to get married and make rotis?’” recounts Lekhi.
But they let her turn the living room into a factory and her bedroom into a
storeroom.
So she persisted, designing bags,
selling them in consignments, making deliveries via buses and managing all
aspects of the business from purchasing to sales. “I had no fear because I had
no targets and I never saw myself as an entrepreneur,” explains Lekhi.
Today, Baggit is a R50- crore
business. Its bags, purses, belts, shoes, multi-purpose pouches and wallets are
stocked at major malls and 16 Baggit stores across the country. But Lekhi’s not
done just yet. “I want 200 stores and I want to retail abroad. I’m just waiting
for their economies to grow.”
Lekhi also confesses to thinking
about business “all the time”. “On holiday, if I see a woman with a nice bag, I
immediately start following her.” And even during the photo shoot, when we ask
to pose with her bags, she picks up each one and first asks her sales staff,
“Will this be in stock when the story comes out?”
- by Mignonne Dsouza HT121209
SHUBHRA CHADDA
The woman behind the kitschy souvenirs
brand Chumbak
W OULD YOU sell your house to
finance your dream? When you’re on maternity leave? Shubhra Chadda did. In
2010, she sold her Bangalore flat for R40 lakh and put that money into her
quirky India-themed lifestyle accessories brand, Chumbak. “I was working for a
company called NetApp and I got to travel a lot,” explains Chadda. “I’d pick up
a fridge magnet from every place I visited. One day, it struck me that none of
my magnets were from India. That’s when
I came up with a plan to make India-themed magnets.” Her boss was not
encouraging (“How many magnets will you sell?”), so Chadda went back to the
corporate grind. A couple of years later, when she decided to have a baby and
take a year’s break, she figured it was time to transform her dream into
reality. “I was a constant cribber and never wanted a desk job,” says Chadda.
“So when Samara was born, I thought to myself ‘let’s do this now’. I made a
list every morning, got samples ready, registered the company, and went ahead.
I wasn’t scared because I knew I had spotted this big gap, and I wasn’t
deterred by negative criticism.”
There certainly were some eyebrows
raised. An elderly gentleman looked at her spoofs on Indian stereotypes and
accused her of “making fun of Indians” but ultimately, the joke was on him.
Chumbak broke even within its first year and now retails from 120 stores across
India. “We joined Facebook early, and had an online store in a month’s time,”
she says. Of the stores that stock Chumbak, “Ninety per cent approached us, and
now, my challenge is to improve our instore displays.”
- by Mignonne Dsouza HT121209
VIJAY NAIR
The man behind powerhouse music
firm, Only Much Louder
W HEN VIJAY Nair decided to take a
year off from college in 2002, he would have been hard-pressed to explain
exactly how he meant to spend his time. After all, what did one mean by
‘managing bands’? “Many of my friends assumed I was wasting my time,” explains
Nair. “They told me this gamble was not going to pay off. I find people are
pessimistic for you either because they care – or because they don’t.”
Nair began by approaching bands and
convincing them to take him on as a manager, booking shows for them, organising
gigs and even touring with them. “You didn’t need money to do this,” he says.
He also helped clients make and distribute albums, and started organising music
festivals around India. It all evolved into an idea for a company: Only Much
Louder (OML). Today, a decade later, that three-letter brand is one of the most
sought after on the Indian music scene. OML still manages Indian bands –
including Pentagram, Swarathma and Dualist Inquiry – but it also organises ace
music festivals such as the Eristoff Invasion and the Bacardi NH7 Weekender
(which will kick off in Bangalore from December 15-16). It also produces music
shows like Sound Trippin and The Dewarists, and brings international artists to
India (Lady Gaga, Imogen Heap and David Guetta were OML projects).
Today, Nair’s business employs 85
people, and his journey is not over. “For me, this period is more exciting than
ever before,” says Nair.
- by Mignonne Dsouza HT121209
RIYAZ AMLANI
The man behind Mocha, Smoke House
Deli, SHRoom and Salt Water Café
Y OU KNOW the feeling. You’re at a
friend’s party. The food’s lovely, the booze is flowing, the music divine, the
mood chilled. And someone says, “If we could bottle this evening, we would make
a fortune”. You nod, sigh, take another sip of beer and forget all about it.
Except Riyaz Amlani didn’t. It got
him thinking that “there was no place where one could hang out with friends in
the middle of the day other than Udipis and five-stars. So in December 2001,
back when nobody knew what a café meant, he and a couple of friends started
Mocha Coffees and Conversation in the outside area of a restaurant his father
ran in Churchgate, Mumbai. Amlani, who had no experience in running any kind of
restaurant (he’d been a shoe salesman and an entertainment consultant), didn’t
have it easy. He had to deal with a lot of scepticism from restaurant people he
consulted. “I was told, ‘Selling coffee will not pay the bills’,” he says. “But
coming from a non-hospitality background helped. When you come to a business
completely un-jaded, you are in a better position to do something different.”
The gang did indeed do it
differently. They took a loan of R5 lakh and “got their hands dirty” setting up
Mocha. “We faced so many hurdles,” Amlani recalls. “The manager quit on the
opening day, and before that, we realised we had no money to buy furniture.”
- by Mignonne Dsouza HT121209
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