House of Experts Ep16: Vibha Kagzi in Conversation with Shuchi Pandya
Vibha Kagzi, the host, is the Founder and CEO of ReachIvy.com, a premium study abroad and career consultancy organization. Vibha, a Harvard alumna, is a successful entrepreneur and believes in helping others chalk out their future careers.
In Episode 16 of House of Experts, we were fortunate to host the Founder of Pipabella.com, Shuchi Pandya. She holds an MBA from the Wharton School of Business and has over 10 years of experience in the jewelry industry. She started Pipabella with the philosophy that today’s young digital consumer prefers trendy, high quality & affordable jewelry. Pipabella uses advanced technology tools to disrupt a traditional industry and in a short span of time has become a market leader across 10 categories of fashion jewellery. Pipabella jewelry has been endorsed by influencers such as Sonam Kapoor, Jacqueline Fernandes, Alia Bhatt and Anushka Sharma.
Pipabella.com recently won the Google SMB Heroes 2017 Award and was listed as a Top 25 Startups by Singapore’s Startup-O Javelin Fund. The company has successfully raised over $1 million in funding from venture capital and angel investors.
Some excerpts from the interview:
1) Tell us about your early years and your journey of becoming an entrepreneur.
I grew up in Mumbai in a family of jewellers, so it actually runs in my blood. I was always interested in business and knew that I would get into this industry. I was really studious during my early years. In my mid-20s, I hit a wall, while I was working in my family business. I always wanted to do something of rthe younger generation of India. That’s when I decided to tap into a different segment of jewellery, and applied to Wharton for an MBA. Business school education gave me a lot of resources which I utilized for my business. I knew I would become an entrepreneur but kept an open mind.
2) What were some of the major challenges you faced while organically growing your business?
Building a team was difficult in the beginning. Frankly, you can’t anticipate what you need when you’re starting a business. As you grow in your entrepreneurial journey, you understand what’s important for you. Testing the product-market fit is very important when you’re starting a business. It’s like matchmaking two things and you have to learn a lot about the product and the market. You have to go out there and talk to many customers in order to analyze your market. We actually tried to understand whether our customers go to the salon to get their hair blow-dried or their nails done, because, from that, we could understand which aspect they wanted to highlight; whether they wanted earrings or rings. Basically, understanding who your customer is, and what they are looking for is important.
3)During your journey, did you ever lose faith? How did you cope up with it?
I was questioning myself all the time! There’s a lot of self-doubts in the journey. It’s customers’ feedback that motivates you to keep going and you feel like you’ve created something. It’s like building a wall, putting in one brick after the other. You can’t build it overnight, it takes time to grow, and that is how I kept going.
4) What kind of quality check do you do for your products?
Our first QC check happens at the warehouse, and the second one happens before the product is dispatched. We’ve taught all our staff members to check for quality. It’s a detailed QC that happens at every stage of manufacturing. We have taught all our staff members to do a quality check.
5) How do you maintain a good relationship with your customers, considering that you have a large consumer base?
I think it’s very important to maintain authenticity with your customers. Due to COVID-19, there were a lot of problems with the deliveries of our products. We made sure that the customers were aware of the on-ground reality, and kept in constant touch with them. I think that when you are genuine with your customers, they can understand when you’re faced with problems. We try and maintain communication with all our customers at all times.
We know that India is a country filled with jewellery design talent. We have planned a lot of things such as augmented reality, machine learning and thus, technology will play a big role in the expansion. We want to increase the presence and access of our brand to places where access is not possible at the moment.
We’re really grateful to Shuchi for sharing her journey and valuable learnings with us. Want to give a boost to your career? Connect with us TODAY! To watch the full conversation, click here.
If you need further guidance for your career, reach out to us!
