“It becomes challenging at times to make people — vendors, prospective employees, ex-employees — believe that yes, the decision I take is in fact the final decision”

Richa Singh is one of the few women entrepreneurs to find an envious position in the Indian startup scene. In a country where discrimination against women is still a pressing issue, and which is growing at an alarming proportion, Singh fought her way out to become a ‘person to reckon with’ in a highly male-dominated industry.

Singh feels that all the hurdles she faced while establishing BigStylist, an on-demand beauty and salon services startup backed by InfoEdge, she would have faced them irrespective of her gender. These are mainly related to hiring a good-quality team, rolling out of operations, getting customers, and raising funds. She is however of a view that the society is yet to accept a woman entrepreneur.

e27 listened to Singh’s startup story, and the big hurdles she faced when building from BigStylist from scratch.

Edited excerpts:

There are quite a few on-demand beauty and salon services in India, with less or no USPs at all. Why should the country need another such venture?

Existing on-demand beauty services were not quite up to the mark in terms of brands and products they used. In fact, most act as lead generators and aggregators that simply pass on customer’s orders to freelancers. In this process, the only loser is the customer as she gets different experiences every single time.

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That’s when we thought of coming up with an internet salon, which stands for complete ownership of customer experience and standardisation. There are several other pain points to be solved. Why cannot there be early morning services for working women? BigStylist does that! Why must a physical salon invest INR 70 lakh (US$10,000) in a place before starting operations? The salon-at-home aspect can do away with that investment.

When did the entrepreneurship bug bite you?

When I moved to IIT Kharagpur for higher studies, I was disappointed by the quality of service provided by local beauty parlours or salons. The service was so bad that many a times IIT girls travelled more than 110kms to Kolkata for their basic grooming needs, which was a major hassle during hectic academic sessions.

I continued to face this problem as I moved to different cities for my MBA (at IIM Ahmedabad), and later when I started travelling around countries during my consulting stint with Oliver Wyman.

After realising the magnitude of the pain-point, I along with Chinmaya Sharma and Anurag Srivastava did some research at ground level, and then conceptualised BigStylist in May 2015. The idea was to get the salon to travel to the customer’s place and ensure that the experience is standardised across visits.

Can you walk me through your product, traction etc.?

BigStylist.com is an on-demand salon-at-home offering spa and salon services at home. It offers services from handpicked and trained beauticians to the consumer in the comfort of her own home, on her preferred schedule. All the experts on BigStylist work exclusively with BigStylist with they take complete ownership of every aspect of customer experience — training, uniforms, products, feedback, pre and post-service advisory. This ensures a much better and holistic customer experience, hence creating platforms that act as marketplaces or intermediaries.

When it comes to traction, Bigstylist is at an annual revenue run-rate of INR 5-6 crore (around US$400,000), while being operationally profitable upwards of 20 per cent in both the cities we play in. They have served nearly 50,000 orders in the last year and half of their existence. The internet salon grew north of 30 per cent m-o-m in January 2017.

We currently offer services across Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, and Pune. We are looking to expand to Hyderabad and Delhi NCR in the coming months.

Where is the on-demand beauty industry heading for? Is it growing strong on the back of the rising middle-class population?

In its organised, technology-led avatar, it is a pretty new industry. I would say that the biggest trend simply is the speed at which the industry is growing (most players are growing over100 per cent y-o-y). This implies customers are earning up to the idea at a great pace. Most salon-at-home players are not acquiring customers from each other but from existing physical salons.

I think the other key trend is how this industry is moulding itself to customers’ needs by opening up early morning and late evening slots.

There are very few female entrepreneurs in India. Do you think it is tough to be an entrepreneur for women?

I feel that all the hurdles I faced while establishing BigStylist, I would have faced them irrespective of my gender. Hiring a good-quality team, rolling-out operations, getting customers to repose faith in them and raising funds are all challenges that any entrepreneur should expect to face, notwithstanding gender and idea.

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However, the larger society in India is still not as geared to see and accept a young woman lead a company as I would ideally want. Hence, it becomes challenging at times to make people (vendors, prospective employees, ex-employees) believe that yes, the decision I take is in fact the final decision. Some have even gone to the extent of actually declaring, “No, no, you cannot be the owner.”

Women hesitate to take up entrepreneurship due to various social factors. How do you manage the professional and personal life? Is it hard?

At a slightly philosophical level, for most entrepreneurs their startup is a labour of love. The hours are not easier than most other professions, but you will not hear entrepreneurs complain. The journey is enjoyable, too, whether or not you have one eye permanently transfixed on the outcome.

At a practical level, the best thing about working at BigStylist is that people were either already friends or have become friends after joining BigStylist. Our major source of hiring is referrals and we make sure to hire guys who can lend uniformity to the culture we want to build but diversity to capabilities and ideas we are looking for.

There are days when we work for crazy hours and then there are times when we are just chilling, so we usually create our personal space and time as per our convenience. Of course, there are conflicts and difference of opinions, but they are usually resolved through discussions and since we all have a common goal, it’s easy to be in tandem.

Why are there very few women entrepreneurs in India? What is holding them back from diving into entrepreneurship?

That used to be a fact, but now the scenario is fast undergoing a change and there are a lot of women entrepreneurs who have ventured into the market with interesting business ideas. Of course, over decades girls have been the second preferred gender in India when it comes to allocation of a family’s budget towards education, nutrition, career-preparedness etc. This will continue to show in the ratio of male entrepreneurs vs. female entrepreneurs for a few more years to come.

However, do not go looking for quantity. In terms of quality, there are enough success stories of women entrepreneurs waiting to emerge from both rural as well as urban India.”

What learnings you have had that you would like to impart to the aspiring minds in the country?

Learn as much as you can about the industry you operate in. Become an expert in that industry. Obviously, there are plenty of resources to learn from, but also try to find a mentor who directly answers your questions.

A common mistake I see many startup founders making is that they aren’t solving a real problem. You should try to solve a real problem that people have — replace their need with your product. Also, make sure you feed your mind with the things that you’re fond of so that your personal life stays as enriched as your professional life. Do not let the latter consume your personal life.

One last piece of advice, especially for women entrepreneurs, is to assert oneself more. One’s opinions do not become less or more valuable given one’s gender.

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Image Credit (salon service): milanmarkovic / 123RF Stock Photo

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