As part of our relentless pursuit to identify and share with our community some of the unique and compelling stories from the ecosystem, this weekend we spoke to another passionate women entrepreneur Aarushi Jain to understand more about her journey, her vision and the way forward. She is a startup consultant, legal advisor and Founder and Partner at Chambers of Jain and Kumar. Let’s learn more about her incredible journey so far!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Aarushi:
We are aware of your contribution to the ecosystem, talk us through your background and your journey as a women entrepreneur, please;
As Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, “I just try to do the good job that I have to the best of my ability and I really don’t think about whether I’m inspirational. I just do the best I can.”
I never carved myself a path or was guided professionally by anyone while opting for law as my career path, given that I belong to a family with no lawyers. 5 years of law school involved 4 hours of travel every single day in the ever-running fast Delhi traffic. My school used to be a 5-minute walk from my home, suddenly being a part of a rigorous routine.
In my first semester of law school, I often questioned myself if I wanted to pursue the chosen path. However, as they say, play the ball as it comes to you, the theory worked for me and gradually while studying the curriculum, interning, learning and growing every day, the question got an answer, “I was meant for this and couldn’t imagine myself doing anything else apart from that”.
Given the myself-discovered passion for law, I took up a part-time internship after law school hours, in addition to my mandatory internships during vacations. After attending law school till lunch hour, I used to spend around 5 hours every day at a law firm.
I continued this for almost 2.5 years. It helped me understand the implementation of law in cases, representation in courts and gave me an opportunity to be a part of various out of court settlements. I learned the art of interacting with clients, efforts put it in to build business and all that it takes to run your own law firm, comprehensively. I am grateful for having wonderful mentors who I will always look up to in the field.
After graduating from law school, I took up a judicial clerkship with a judge and learned from the best. I learned to appreciate law from the other side of the spectrum and gained great lifelong relationships.
Further, I pursued a master’s degree in law from the University of California, Berkeley, which helped me explore myself a step further with diverse life experiences. I have been a part of top tier law firms in the country, but as they say to each their own, those experiences have been instrumental in me being led to my path of starting my own law firm.
We all learn along the way and fight our own battles. No time is a better time to achieve anything in life. While carving my career path and exploring what I wanted, as a woman entrepreneur, I have had some harsh comments along the way, such as “you are privileged enough in life to not do anything and just sit at home.”
Why should the time is taken to explore ourselves ever be assumed for us to be less ambitious about our goals or discourage us to question our choices?
Long story short, lots of experiences later, I am living my dream of running my own law firm, by strongly believing in myself. I have a rock-solid foundation for my firm in place, and I aim to keep building upon the foundation with the sky being the limit.
What attracts you towards entrepreneurship instead of a corporate career?
I have grown up in a family of CAs, who have had their own practice and my mind always accumulated skills that help in running your own business, rather than a corporate job, my decision got further affirmed after I actually joined law firms and realized that I don’t find myself cut for the system therein.
There are multiple reasons which have inspired me to lean towards entrepreneurship instead of a corporate career, I can think of few of those: –
Since my childhood, I have always been in the driving seat for every project done with a group. I end up voluntarily taking charge on the situations. When it comes to problem-solving, I ensure to go till the last mile to achieve the best solution. This ability in me has pushed me towards starting my own firm, where I get to lead the firm as well as lead the clients and their causes for tackling all the legal issues, negotiations etc.
I try to keep a solution-oriented approach with a strong implementation mechanism, as a team leader and a team player, we find solutions to all the causes together and the most suitable ways to implement them in the best way possible. If I think about something, all my energies are only focused to get that one thing and that’s how I get it, I always want to learn while growing each day, Accolades and achievements – motivate me and I always keep a strong sense of humility while accepting them.
Things that don’t work – I learn from them and work towards a better time to make them happen the way I want. I learn from every experience, mistake and implement it in my life as a positive change.
Networking, talking to new people with fresh ideas, and understanding people’s journeys has always excited me to the core. I am a firm believer of the fact that there is always so much to grasp from every story I come across.
‘Chambers of Jain and Kumar’ is such a unique name; talk us through more about it, please. Our audience would also love to know what kind of problem you are solving?
CJK – is a venture between a close friend Prateek Kumar and I. Our firm has three of us as partners. In addition to having strong bonds of friendship and mutual trust, we would take a bullet for each other, an essential for any business partnership. Two of us partners Yojit Pareek and I also share a life.
Prateek Kumar and I always worked remotely together, on various assignments, with superb coordination and fruitful results, and decided to level up by formally starting a venture together.
PROBLEM-SOLVING –
Our problem solving started right from the first case we had done together, wherein we recovered a huge chunk of money for our clients, within a month with super timely follow-ups and a rock-solid strategy.
We regularly together advise and assist numerous startups right from inception on a going basis comprehensively on a wide array of areas such as protecting ideas, incorporations, funding, negotiations, contracts and policies and any other legal areas where the startup may require our assistance from both compliance and legal perspective.
We are working as retainers for various startups in health care, electronic mobility, FMCG, cryptography, food and beverage, to name a few.
Further, we also realize our responsibilities as attorneys and as a law firm we believe in extending aid to the community in which we live. As part of our pro-bono practise, we assist individuals and agencies with limited resources to get access to justice and the legal system.
As an instance, recently we were approached by the grandparents of a minor girl for her custody, as the girl was abused by her parents, we immediately moved the court and assisted the grandparents in seeking peaceful custody of the minor girl and initiation of enquiry against parents.
On a continual basis, as a full-service law providing end to end legal solutions, we assist individuals, businesses and NGOs on a regular basis on a variety of issues and legal assistance.
During this COVID-19 crisis, what are the measures you have undertaken to continue your business without disruption?
Our law firm has flourished leaps and bounds during the COVID-19 crisis. I can list down few reasons for this: –
1) We are a fully paperless office and strongly reliant on technology. We have shifted our traditional law firm on a virtual network completely and seamlessly. For everything including drafting, filing, client meetings, internal meetings and other miscellaneous work.
2) Virtual working for our law firm during the COVID-19 crisis has helped us save on time, effort and cost. We find ourselves more productive with efficiency in handling existing clients as well as building new ones with more time at hand. We have experienced reduced administrative costs while operating virtually.
3) Being a full-service law firm, we internally assessed our lowest hanging fruits to thrive and continue during the pandemic. While getting those on a regular basis, we simultaneously worked on bigger assignments.
4) During this year of the COVID-19 crisis, in individual capacities on behalf of our law firm, all of us have maintained a constant and empathetic approach towards our clients, colleagues and fellow professionals. We have maintained communication through messages, calls and our knowledge management initiatives such as webinars, articles, newsletters, etc.
How do you manage to keep going despite the challenges? What drives you?
To sum it up in a process stepwise, the following keeps me going: –
(a) Setting a goal Strong
(b) Charting my plan to achieve the goal
(c) Strong Perseverance and Focused approach towards the goal
For e.g.- during the initial days when the covid-19 crisis hit all of us, we had set a goal to begin expanding internationally for our law firm within the next year, following our goal in full swing with persistence, today we have done multiple legal assignments for businesses located outside India and are working as retainers for them on a going basis.
We have further expanded our horizons by forming best friend relationships with law firms across the world in approx. 20 different jurisdictions with a vast contact sphere.
Who do you believe has been the biggest source of motivation in your daily life?
My life partner Yojit and my mother are my biggest source of motivation in my life. As I call them the strongest two pillars on which my life stands.
Yojit ensures till the end of earth that I get what I want in terms of my dreams, goals, life everything that one can imagine for their life. I think about things and he makes them happen like a magician.
It could be in any form including his ability to motivate me every moment to actually doing things to ensure I get/achieve everything I imagine. In the most precise terms, he turns all my wishful thinking into reality, quite literally always.
My mother is the strongest woman I know. She has an unimaginable balanced approach over everything our lives work upon. She is an epitome and example of how a positive attitude and an honest approach towards life can help us get our desired paths. I have learned the ability and importance of building and maintaining relationships in all spheres of life from her.
And with pillars, you always need a strong root. That root is my father for me for everything and anything.
What are some of the strategies that you believe have helped you grow as a person?
There are a few:
Being meticulous: Attention to detail and having a fine eye for all the issues be it personal or professional, has helped me deliver the best. A lot of our clients appreciate that for our firm with effective timelines and utmost qualitative results. I have always tried being as organized as I can be, for e.g., in my personal life when I paint, or plan a trip, or watch something, or the way I live, I have developed this habit of going in the detail of everything and to note everything. I have about 500-600 notes in my phone at any point in time. On a lighter note, unfortunately, I am known in my circles to keep lists and To-Dos for everything in life.
Taking ownership and learning from my mistakes: As a professional and running my own firm, taking ownership of the work is the foremost quality I have enhanced in the last few years. I have learned from my mistakes, accepted them as a teaching or a life lesson to ensure that the best in me comes out. As a human being, I feel it is essential to evolve continuously.
Taking risks and backing up my team: When you are running your own show, risk-taking and developing new ideas and strategy is paramount. To keep growing, we may need to take bold steps or come up with dynamic ideas at times, as they say, sometimes you need to skate on thin ice. It may so be that a few times the ideas tank but whenever they work, they outshine us. So, I have learned to take risks and also back up my colleagues for the same.
You are always positive and motivated, what keeps you going?
In reality, it isn’t always possible to be positive and motivated always, but we definitely need to push ourselves to it at times or sometimes, we may actually require giving time or a break to ourselves.
However, my positivity and motivation come from largely three things,
(i) humour
(ii) mindfulness
(iii) breaking the routine.
Having a sense of humour can be a breath of fresh air when we need it most, reinvigorating ourselves and our motivation. Humour helps in Greater acceptance of mistakes – our own and others and Increases our ability to influence others.
I ensure that I give an hour every day towards my health (both mental and physical), to keep myself at bay, I ensure to do meditation or at least go for long relaxing walks whenever I want to get myself back on track. Music is another instrumental part of my life.
I have never been a person who will keep following the same routine every day. Personally, doing the same thing every day demotivates me. I ensure to have my own changes in personal and professional life.
As long as you are disciplined and aware of the path, it is totally a matter of choice on the way to achieve it.
In your opinion, what are the keys to success?
In my opinion, there are 5 (five) key points I really believe are the key to success:
(1) Keep believing in yourself, staying confident, like and feel good about yourself, take pride in what you do, there may be some or other way, making you feel otherwise, but this attribute has always helped me.
(2) Always expect the best possible outcome for what you do. Your thoughts are like magnets; you attract what you think.
(3) Set goals so that you can reach them. When you do, reach a little higher.
(4) Never quit. Never give up. Keep going and keep trying.
(5) Maintain a healthy mind, body, and spirit.
What advice would you give students and young professionals who want to have a successful career?
No matter how tough the time or the journey is, just hang in there. Explore your skills, your areas of interest.
Chart a path for yourself and aim to achieve it. You may come across varied experiences with different people in your journey, accept what you understand, learn along the way and keep moving forward.
Keep believing in yourself and things will fall in place eventually. All of us are always learning in some way or other in our own situations.
BrilliantRead is committed to bringing stories from the startup ecosystem, stories that reshape our perspective, add value to our community and be a constant source of motivation not just for our community but also for the whole ecosystem of entrepreneurs and aspiring individuals.
Note: If you have a similar story to share with our audience and would like to be featured on our online magazine, then please write to us at [email protected], we will review your story and extend an invitation to feature if it is worth publishing.
