As part of our ongoing quest to get you meaningful and powerful stories from the startup ecosystem, we invited yet another passionate and purpose-driven woman entrepreneur – Richa Sharma for an exclusive interview with BrilliantRead Media. She is the Founder of The Book Cafe. Let’s read more about her inspiring journey so far and the way forward!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with her:
Talk us through your background or your journey as a women entrepreneur;
I am the firstborn to an Engineer father & a lecturer mother. I did my schooling from St. Patrick’s Vidya Bhawan, Jodhpur, and completed my Master’s Degree in Microbiology. I aspired to enter IIMs and appeared for CAT but couldn’t get through. Got selected in one of the top MBA colleges of Pune, but my mother brought me back. Married at 21 and mother of two at 26, it was not easy to start the entrepreneurial journey and make a balance between my personal and professional life.
After marriage, I joined my husband’s IT company and started working with him, but realised on an early stage that it was not my stream and my wings needed a larger sky to fly and explore new dimensions of success.
The whole cafe business was totally offbeat and quite challenging for me. I have a keen interest in moulding things, going to the core, and digging it more. Knowingly, unknowingly, it was my passion that took the front-seat ride and gave me what I wanted. A mix of destiny and passion served me with what was best for me! And my first venture The Book Cafe came on the board!”
According to me, Coffee and Books make the best combination and the idea of a place that brought these both together always appealed to me. Before TBC, there was no place as such in the town where people could come, read the books, share their ideas, and connect over a cup of coffee.
The major missing link was networking. Hence, books, coffee and connectivity came together. It was the year 2016 when my dreams and passion got its wings and I started this cafe outlet. In 2017 “ The Book Café “ came into existence from a passionate prototype function and it became my story of building a brand of my own.
A place where people can sit, talk, have their meetings, read books, enjoy with a cup of coffee, and can share millions of unknown memories. TBC is situated in the secluded area, and as it was a newbie in the town, people were apprehensive about the location, but for me, it has always been a peaceful place, away from the hustle-bustle of the city. I feel that one cannot enjoy anything in life until they remove their extra baggage of stress and worries. This locale was exactly the same. A peaceful environment with a fresh breeze of happiness was serene to me.
And bit-by-bit with time, from groceries to budgeting, me and my team went ahead in this and created a milestone.
And with it also came my reward: my much-aspired dream to join IIM came to place. I got selected in IIM Bangalore for a course sponsored by Goldman Sachs!!
How did this start-up idea come to your mind?
“A great idea without action is a waste.”
I was always passionate about food and books, and when I saw this gap in my city that there is no place where we can nourish our ideas and develop an entrepreneurial zeal, I worked on it and came up with my venture “The Book Cafe”. Having a start-up business is all about how aggressively you work, your risk-taking appetite and your zeal to grow. With every day we try to improve ourselves, and advance our networking with the customers. Be it vendors, suppliers or any worker, we take care of each and everyone thoroughly. From making a market-fit product to deliver brand value. You have to check on every step of the process. The Book Cafe with all the hard work and efforts has become the pioneer of developing cafe culture and reforming networking in the city. It is my passion that drives me every day to work with the same enthusiasm and energy.
Share some of the challenges you faced in your journey?
To take the first few baby steps to start something is always the toughest. Being a women entrepreneur from a small town, it was very difficult to break the social norms and to set an example against the odds. It is still a long way to change the mindset of most of the people. It is a traditional taboo in disguise that women enter into the business just to live their hobby or to assist their spouse and family. But in reality, the majority of the female entrepreneurs want to earn their individual identity and show their business skills to make a change around them.
When I started plugging in with the groceries and the necessities for the cafe, people told me upfront that it is a bad idea and it won’t work. Being a beginner and completely new to this field it was a bit challenging but I understood that the beginning is surely the hardest, but its fruitful success is the sweetest. Being a female, I know how to handle the criticism with a big wide smile. I and my team hustled in silence and concentrated on the outcome.”
We knew our base was strong. Hence, moving ahead was the only option. My team was full of energy and impassioned about their work. I never felt like giving up. I remember, initially, even a total billing of Rs/-1000 was a very big thing for us. In fact, on our first total billing of Rs/-5000, I gave a party to my entire staff! It is these small achievements that keep you motivated, I guess! For us, these little gestures weren’t little and the gratitude practice made us strong.
Secondly, how many times we have seen in our homes that the females actively lead the kitchen department, but if we turn our vision wide around the food industry, we will not find female leaders holding the flag. The Food industry is majorly led by male leaders and one of the challenges I faced during my journey was that being the mother of two young kids it was really tough to make the balance between the same.
The next major problem I felt was that as a community-building cafe, we are involved in corporate, entrepreneurial and events on festivals. And when there is peak time in any of the events mentioned, there is no time limit to our working hours and you have to handle the emotional pressure with your work. When other people celebrate, we, as teamwork tirelessly to bring happiness on our customers’ faces.
But today, when we see TBC as the most loved, featured and applauded cafe of the town, we feel good about the decision I took back then.
What is your business mantra?
To keep working for my passion and principles. It is our traditions and values that can take us forward. And a career of your passion is the icing on the cake. Money is a part of your success but it is not necessary that success will always be a part of great money. So, I work for my values and we do business, but my objective is a complete success. One cannot wait for a perfect opportunity to go ahead or decide when the time is right. Indeed, creating an opportunity anytime and anywhere can make you go further.
How do you handle the pressure and manage stress?
As a female founder and leading the business industry, you learn very early on your journey that pressure and stress are a part of your daily life. When you have an entrepreneurial mindset and zeal to excel, you don’t look out for work pressure; indeed, you work more cautiously to secure a healthy position in the competitive market place. One thing that has made me resilient is that setbacks and failures will be a part of your life, but stressing over it can make you more awful. Hence, working hard with more passion is the only solution I come across. You have to adapt the attitude to see pressure and stress in your pockets, but still, act like everything is hunky-dory!
And sometimes, when I need a break, a few minutes playing with my kids can revive my energy back.
What has worked well for you so far?
I think it is PERSISTENCE.
I always tried to push ahead and create new benchmarks for myself. There is a beautiful axiom by Paulo Coelho which says, “If you want to achieve anything, the entire universe conspires it to make it happen.” I seriously think it happens this way!
I wanted TBC to create a benchmark in the industry. We focused on making it a ‘happy place’ for everyone. Be it a student, artists, readers, or any other amateur or professional in his craft. We thought of building a healthy networking community that connects over a cup of coffee. While we were busy in the operations, it got featured at many places and was the talk of the town.
Starting with one outlet, we expanded to three outlets within three years in the city, and now trying to ascend further out of the city. So, it is your perseverance, teamwork and diligence that pays off!
Furthermore, I would like to add that one should always take reviews from others and try to work on shortcomings.
In your opinion, what are the keys to success?
Being in love with your work is the primary thing. Being persistent is the second one. Taking a leap of faith for your idea with all the courage and perseverance you have in a particular time frame is what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur.
Given the rapid phase at which the world is changing, what are the leadership traits that are necessary for success?
In these times where everything happens at a fast pace, being quick and crisp with your decisions is very important. In the new market, to be successful, you have to leave the conventional ways of business and shift to new aggressive growth.
For millennials, we need to change the ways of marketing and branding of our products and shift to a faster pace of making new trends.
So, the founder has to be a quick decision-maker, quick enough to communicate the brand offering in the market with confidence, be able to increase the market share of the product and services being offered and be ready for unicorn growth.
During this Covid-19 crisis, what are the measures you have undertaken to continue your business without disruption?
Food and beverage industry is the worst affected industry because of COVID pandemic and as a community-building cafe, we have to develop resilience towards the current situation and turbulence. We are making every effort to adopt new practices and keep our operations to the highest standards of hygiene level to keep our customers safe. It is a new market for every industry and we as entrepreneurs need to update ourselves to the new consumer behaviour and try our best to retain the loyal league of our brands.
As the trendsetter cafe, we are making a new wave to lead the industry and making a great comeback. For sustenance, we are keeping our cash flow intact and for our customers, we have reformed our operations and process cycles.
Every Disruption brings new opportunities and among the new challenges we are bringing with a new venture for networking and community building – the Virtual Coffee Table. VCT is a platform to connect entrepreneurs, change-makers, content creators, consumers and mentors on a single platform to share their ideas, execute plans, and grow mutually in the new market. A new wave is in making and we believe that the new streams of networking and connecting will change the pace of the economy and reform the style of informal professional community-building.
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.
