SHEROES Blog from Siddharth Gopal

Yesterday, we had a very interesting session by Ms. Sairee Chahal, founder and CEO of SHEROES. Some of the key lessons we learnt were:

1. Start young, start small, start simple:Ms.Chahal herself had started working while as young as 17, and this ensured that she had more than 4-5 years of work experience by the time she passed out of college. Also, it is not essential to start a huge company from day one. Our idea can be made to work with even a whatsapp group or a Facebook page when we start off, as our resources are limited.
2. Be consistent and show up every day: She told us that we need to do something everyday towards making our dream idea a reality. It is important to continue maintaining our relationships with everyone we meet as we never know who can help us in our venture. In a rapidly changing world, doing things consistently day after day is the mantra for success.
3. Be ready to have a thick skin and ‘beg and borrow’: When it comes to financing as well as gaining a foot in the door of large companies for our ideas, we need to have a thick skin and be ready to ‘beg and borrow’ and hustle to make things work.
4. Be hyper-focused: We cannot always be all things to all people, so we need to be hyper focused on what we want to achieve and remove all other distractions and work towards realizing our dream idea and making it a successful venture.
5. The concept of ‘dog fooding’: It is essential that we test our products/ideas ourselves as well as with our friends and family, so that we can fine tune it, before we take it to the market.

She also mentioned the importance of soft skills for an entrepreneur, including the ability to have an open mind and be curious about the world around us and to always be able to learn.