For the last event of the Ladies Study Group’s calendar year, members got a chance to hear about the journeys of three successful female entrepreneurs who persevered despite failures to be what they are today. The session that was moderated by the immediate past president of LSG, Diya Jaiswal, saw designer Anita Dongre; Priya Paul, chairperson of Apeejay Surrendra Park Hotels; and Nina Lekhi, MD and chief design curator, Baggit, talk about their respective journeys and their tips for success. Excerpts:
Starting out
Priya Paul: I always knew as a young kid that I wanted to join the family business. My parents encouraged me every step of the way and made sure I was empowered. When I joined the business, my father had just opened The Park, New Delhi and I started training under him as a marketing manager. That was in 1988. My father passed away in 1990 and suddenly I was catapulted to looking after three (hotels). I was 23-24 and also realised that I had a more creative bend and wanted to make the hotels more distinctive by bringing in culture into the space — from art and dance to music and the interiors. I worked at transforming each of these hotels into happening, vibrant places at each of these cities (Calcutta, Visakhapatnam and Delhi) with music, dancing, a nice bar and a lot things happening. We added hotels in Bangalore and Chennai and then started expanding the brand — The Park Hotels, Park Collections and Zone by the Park.
Anita Dongre: I came from a conservative family and was a rebel child. I started with two small sewing machines on my balcony. Even when I studied at a design school, I had this vision because I always thought this large. Women designers those days are just limited to boutiques and I found that very limiting. Today, mine is a large fashion house that has a CEO and I play the creative head now though I have played every role in my company. I am still very hands-on and work 10-12 hours a day, even during the lockdown. For me, the journey is not over. Taking the store to New York was a bold decision I made and almost regretted it when the city went under lockdown. But it’s great, we have almost recovered and the store is back to making profits and I am already thinking about where the next store should be.
Nina Lekhi: Failing in the first year in college and that was a big kick from god. I started my business that year and cutting patterns for bags myself because that is all I knew. The next year, I got an award at the same college and it shows if you put your mind to it, you can reach anywhere. The name Baggit comes from Michael Jackson’s song Beat It and it’s been a fabulous journey from exhibitions to the first Shoppers Stop that came up and to having a store. The first store did as bad as we envisioned but the next store made us break even. I also had a spiritual linkage with my husband and my guru who always asked me why I was doing this and it was always to be an international, Indian brand.
Managing the pandemic
Priya: My team mobilised and got down to business early on and I am very proud of that. Suddenly from a frenetic phase, we were down to zero occupancy during the lockdown. The task force looked into everything from safety issues to revenue related matters. Things were changing really fast so we had to change the way we did business too. We are lucky that we didn’t shut our hotels completely and from May-June last year, we picked up occupancy and posted a profit. The team was resilient and agile and that makes me proud.
Anita: I think the most important thing we have done is staying in touch with everyone from our team, boosting their morale and trying to help in whatever way we can. As far as business is concerned, we are resetting out targets every week as fashion is such a different sort of a business and with lockdown, we don’t know which store will open when and decisions regarding merchandising need to be made. It has taught us to be extremely flexible, very nimble and our figures change every day as we do not know what will happen tomorrow.
Nina: We have been doing a lot of R&D and doing new ranges — things that we wouldn’t have the time to do otherwise so that when we are back to normalcy, we have a few more offerings ready. We are just making business plans every day and going with the flow. Women are stronger and can handle a lot more. And we look at it that way that everything is a play in the hands of God. There is no other choice!
Success mantra
Priya: Making mistakes has really helped me to move forward. It is important to make mistakes and remain positive with what you want to do. Half of the work is to turn up every single day and to keep your team motivated.
Anita: Just going to work every single day and giving it my 200 per cent. Consistency leads to success and that also means you don’t give up. I have had my failures too but you just have to learn from them and not give up.
Nina: Me failing at college definitely taught me to work harder. In business, we always have ups and downs. Creating a vision is very important to look beyond your fears and get clarity over what you want.
