From Struggle to Success: A Woman Entrepreneur's Incredible Journey

The Beginning

Soon after graduating as a civil engineer, the protagonist of our story landed a job in Dubai at the age of 21. Her initial salary was around 50,000 - 60,000 INR, quite a decent pay scale at that point in time. However, her tranquil life was interrupted when her family beckoned her back to India for marriage.

Battle between work and family

Post her marriage, she successfully managed the track of family and work until she got pregnant with her second child. Her determined spirit didn't let her compromise her career even though she had two kids to handle. However, after her maid returned to India due to her family issues, she found it tough to sustain her job in Dubai alone. This marked the beginning of her entrepreneurial journey.

First Entrepreneurial Venture Failure

The initial idea for her entrepreneurial venture came in the form of a curriculum called 'LIKES' (Learning Innovative Key Employment Skills) when she was working as a Placement Head. She invested around 8 lakhs in setting up the enterprise. She envisaged the idea as a real hit that would bring a revolutionary change in student placements.
However, her first venture ended up in failure majorly due to two reasons:

• Lack of comparative analysis: She didn't evaluate if any other traditional player was providing a similar offering.
• Misjudgment of customer readiness: She assumed the students would readily accept her new offering, which unfortunately didn't happen. She was too ahead of her time.

The Additional Job and Second Venture Failure

Despite the initial failure, her spirit was undeterred. She joined a real estate company as a manager with a meager salary of 25,000 INR, only to sharpen her skills and gain insight into marketing. Within six months, she escalated to the position of 'Head of Sales and Marketing', all thanks to her remarkable selling skills. Upon relocating due to personal circumstances, she initiated her second venture - a marketing agency, leveraging the network she had built while working as a marketing head. Essentially, she was producing marketing reports for other companies.

The Debts Pile Up

All was going smoothly until she went on a 13-day vacation, and one of her clients failed to pay a substantial amount of 25 lakhs INR to the company. As her company had connected the client to the vendor, this became her responsibility. To help her business survive, she decided to repay the debt herself, resulting in a debt of around 75 lakhs INR after rolling. Despite the serious financial crunch, she didn't share her predicament with her family, for fear of their judgment.

Breaking the Glass Ceiling

Things took a turn when a friend offered her a small marketing project. This small project was a beginning of her financial resurrection. She gradually regained lost ground and started to clear her debt. This was when she met her future co-founder on Linkedin. Initially, he turned down her collaboration proposal due to their unequal financial standing. However, impressed with her determined spirit and passion, he later agreed to collaborate once she had regained her financial stability.

The Successful Ventures

Together, they initiated multiple companies, including Flexi Cloud - a pass platform that brings all public cloud providers under one umbrella. It manages websites and applications for clients, ensuring their uptime and security issues. Their client retention rate stands at an impressive 95%. In due course, they also started another finance-based platform - Pocket CFO, which provides a virtual CFO for startups and businesses that cannot afford an in-house CFO.

The Million Dollar Revenue and Personal Worth

Today, her businesses generate around a million dollars in revenue. She's now financially independent and can comfortably fund luxuries including her son's education abroad. With a personal net worth of five to six crores, apart from her stake in her start-ups, she has shown the world, and more importantly herself, what she's truly capable of.

Key Takeaways

• Even after initial failures, the strength lies in standing up, learning from the mistakes, and moving forward.
• Networking plays a crucial role in the success of your entrepreneurial journey.
• Being ahead of your time does not translate into immediate success; customers' readiness for accepting the product is equally crucial.
• There should be a financial backup at every stage of entrepreneurship, right from the ideation to scale-up phase.
• Your passion and unwavering commitment to your goals are the keys to success, even in the face of adversity.