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 passionate entrepreneur – Nischal Sharma, for an exclusive interview with us. He is the co-founder of Svenklas – a design-driven direct to consumer luxury lifestyle brand which is creating thoughtful products using responsibly sourced natural materials. Let’s learn more about his exciting journey as an entrepreneur, way forward and his advice for those starting out!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Nischal:
Talk us through your background and your journey as an entrepreneur so far, please;
Right from school, unlike my peers, I consumed a lot of literature on art, design, photography and architecture that shaped my thought process during my formative years.
I got inspired by people like Mies, Dieter Rams, Jony Ive and Zaha Hadid. This interest in a way led me to do various interesting things in college, I would collect discarded materials that could be recycled and would normally end up in a landfill like for example billboards. I would then use them to create functional carry items with the help of a portable sewing machine.”
After I finished college, I worked with a few enterprise product companies where I learned the art of marketing, selling and people management. During this period, I was working with my friend Nikhil on finding ways to create sustainable lifestyle items mainly backpacks made from “non-fuel” based materials.
All of this eventually culminated into Svenklas where we are creating technical lifestyle products of the future with innovative natural materials and minimalist design.
Why did you choose entrepreneurship over a job?
While working in a job, I felt that I really missed the creativity there so I used to do a lot of creative projects in my free time.
I always wanted to do things where I enjoy the work so much that it seems like play.”
Entrepreneurship in a way provides that opportunity where you can do something meaningful and at the same time enjoy what you’re doing so much that it becomes essentially the same thing as play.
What gets you out of bed in the morning i.e. what’s your source of motivation?
What we’re trying to do at Svenklas is create a significant difference with how people view sustainability in our country. What motivates me is the opportunity that we have to inspire a wave of consumers and even companies in the fashion world to start taking efforts to improve their supply chain, efforts on climate change, working conditions and use of natural materials.
What challenges/obstacles did you face in your journey so far?
Whenever you’re starting something and particularly if you’re starting a company, you have to work super hard to make it succeed and that’s a challenge in itself. When we started Svenklas, we rented a small place and it was really tough because there was so much uncertainty. The other challenge I faced was to choose signal over noise since a lot of my friends told me about the risks of starting a company because they didn’t want me to lose all my money.
What comes first for you – money or emotions?
I always believe that your work is what you do, it’s not who you are and it’s important to strike a balance between commercial viability and emotions. For me, what matters is to create sustainable products of the future with natural materials that people find useful for their everyday journeys.
How do you handle the pressure and manage stress?
Hailing from a city like Dehradun, the love for nature is something I grew up with. I have never been an indoor person and I like all kinds of outdoor activities. That has always helped me keep an empty head and I guess there is no better way to handle stress than venturing outdoors.
What is one strategy that you believe has helped you grow as a person?
The one thing that has helped me is the idea that if you keep making incremental changes to any aspect of life that you want to improve, there is no limit to where you can reach even in a limited span of time. This has really helped me grow in areas that at first seemed insurmountable.
In your opinion what are the keys to success?
It’s incredibly important to have a greater level of optimism, patience and less imagined constraints than people around you. I think you should really like what you’re doing because whatever area you get into – there’s always a chance of failure. If you like what you’re doing, your mind will always be drawn to that thing and that sets you up for success. I also think that persistence is extremely important for success. At the end of the day, it’s just about maintaining your morale and motivation for a longer stretch of time than most other people.
What advice would you give to someone starting out as an aspiring entrepreneur?
I think it’s important for today’s entrepreneurs to realize that if they’re doing something important for the society, then they should be focused on that and not get distracted by things like “changing the world” or “building an empire”. Even if you’re doing something great for a limited number of people, that’s perfectly fine and your work doesn’t have to change the world just to be good.
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.
