At BrilliantRead Media, our aim is to bring to our community some of the unique and compelling stories from the start-up ecosystem. As part of this endeavour, we invited yet another passionate entrepreneur Divya Varma for an exclusive interview with us. Divya is a Leader, Mentor, Entrepreneur and Growth Strategist with proven domain expertise. She is the Co-founder & COO of Taxolawgy Online Services Private Limited. Let’s learn more about her inspirational journey and her advice for our growing community!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Divya:
We are aware of your contribution to the ecosystem, talk us through your background and your journey as a women entrepreneur, please;
I started my career when I was 18; I remember I was in the second year of BCCA and attending a lecture on ethical hacking, I was very unsure about my career and was already having a feeling am 18 and doing nothing. Though getting that feeling at that age is kind of unusual. Suddenly something happened, I took permission and went out of the class.
My destiny probably was calling me. I went to Mr Farooq Haque, who was very well known for CA classes and National level faculty for Taxation in India. He encouraged me to do CA, and I joined the field. I cleared my CPT, and when I was in my intermediate, I joined his company YO Edutech solutions Pvt. ltd as an intern to understand how the actual professional world looks like. I started working with the marketing team and started learning more about it; soon I found myself in a position to make and implement marketing and growth strategy, and it also started giving good results.
Those results were the major motivating force for me. in 2014 I cleared my CA intermediate, and I was in my CA final, the pressure was high, as studying for one of the toughest examinations along with working was difficult. Still, my passion for business strategies was tremendous; I didn’t want to give up on my passion, to secure my career in business strategies and marketing I watched 100 + videos on youtube, Coursera and Udemy, and implemented the learnings in my organisation.”
In 2016, many of my friends started their practice as CA’s and were still looking for clients, I discussed the same with Mr Haque, and we came up with the idea of building a freelancing platform to bridge the gap between experts and clients. Starting something new required a lot of courage, and I had to prove the feasibility of the idea too. I started researching the freelancing market, its future scope, talked with people already into it, and finally, in 2018, we started developing Taxolawgy.
However, Life is all about ups and downs, and probably it was my time to taste one of the worst times of my life on both academic and personal fronts. Being very attached to my Mother, it was very hard for me to see her undergo dialysis every few days and dealing with extreme renal failure. Though she was extremely positive and always supported my career. It took a tremendous toll on my physical and mental health, and I went into depression. It hampered my studies, and I flunked a couple of times in the CA final.
At this juncture, I had a deep, rather soulful conversation with my mentor Mr Haque and decided to drop my CA and focus on my entrepreneurial journey, and from that day, I never looked back.”
What attracts you towards entrepreneurship instead of a corporate career?
There are two kinds of people. One who wants to work in a big organisation, and one who wants to make their organisation big. I belong to a second category.
I started my career with Yo Edutech Solutions Pvt. Ltd., and I was fortunate enough to get an environment where I got the freedom to think, work, and do creative stuff.
My passion for making my organisation big was well encouraged and soon turned out as an opportunity to start my entrepreneurial journey.”
‘Taxolawgy Online Services’ 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 with the help of your startup?
My mentor CA Farooq Haque being a national level coach for tax and law subjects and adventurer at the same time had taken out an All India self-drive tour where he drove 7000 Km in 30 days covering 16 cities and conducted free seminars for students in these cities. He called this tour “Taxolawgy”.”
Later, when we were in the initial planning stage for the freelancing platform for finance and legal services, we thought of naming the same as ‘Taxolawgy”. However, of late, we have enlarged the scope to include highly demanded services like digital marketing, software development, content writing, graphic designing and other business-related services.
So, Taxolawgy is a global freelancing platform, where we connect freelancers with clients globally. Not just that the system works like a virtual office, which provides advanced end to end features, right from posting a requirement, document transfer, audio, video and text chat, negotiations, job status tracking system, timesheet management to dispute resolution mechanism.
During this COVID-19 crisis, what are the measures you have undertaken to continue your business without disruption?
Lockdown proved to be a blessing in disguise for us. Not only we realised how badly the working professionals need this kind of platform to help them going and be self-reliant. It also helped us run our day to day activities.
Our whole team was working remotely and was using Taxolawgy for work management, for tracking the work, document transfers, meetings, timesheets etc, instead of other platforms like Microsoft teams, skype etc.
How do you manage yourself and keep on going despite the challenges? What drives you?
The key to keep going is doing what you love to do; I never take this as work, it is like an art for me, the more I work for my startup, the more I find myself in a meditative zone.
And when you do what you love, you barely see the challenges. You might have heard the saying “Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.” I never like to take my eyes off to my goals.
In your opinion, what is more necessary: An idea or a good team for a successful startup?
I think both are equally important, your idea as well as your team. The idea is like a destination, and a team is like a car if you don’t have any destination you will never start your car no matter how good it is.
But when you have one, a good car can make the journey smoother and faster.
We would love to know your advice for all those starting out as an aspiring entrepreneur?
Running a startup is like nurturing a plant. You’ve to water, fertilize, and cut out the weeds in the right amount, at the right time to make it bear fruits.
Here are a few tips to remember before you begin your business –
1 – Validate your idea before you put your money on it.
2 – Research is the most important activity to be done in a startup, but the majority of people ignore it. Research as much as possible- it will tell you more and more about your audience, their needs, behaviour or maybe you will get some new feature to add in your product/services.
3 – Take more time in planning and strategy making than implementation. It will help you anticipate and mitigate your future risk and saves time.
4 – Appreciate and invite critics for your idea – it will help you to improve it.
5 – The startup is not just about having a good idea and making a product out of it. You need to take care of every aspect, whether it is legal, financial, technical, etc. Don’t hesitate to take advice from domain experts of all other fields. It will reduce vulnerability.
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.
