At BrilliantRead Media, we always strive to bring some of the meaningful and powerful stories from India and around the world to empower and motivate our growing community. As part of that endeavour, this weekend we invited yet another passionate women entrepreneur Soniya Kundnani to know more about her inspiring journey. She is a seasoned entrepreneur and leader with rich expertise in the Digital Media industry. She is the Co-founder and COO of NewsReach. Let’s learn more about her incredible journey, way forward and her advice for our growing community!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Soniya:
We are aware of your contribution to the ecosystem, talk us through your background and your journey as a women entrepreneur, please;
I come from a humble background, with working parents. My parents have worked at a managerial position in LIC & PNB respectively, which instilled a corporate culture in me from the early days of my life. With respect to education, I am a law graduate from the University of Mumbai and further pursued business and corporate law from Symbiosis Law School.
I started my corporate journey from Thomson Reuters & started developing a great interest in the digital industry.”
With my growing expertise in the industry, I went on to work with Vertoz Advertising Ltd. as Digital Marketing Manager. Along with that, I helped various startups and leading publishers of India to reach the right audience through digital marketing.
With nearly 5 years of experience in this industry, I have become acquainted with the digital platform. While working at Vertoz, I and my co-founder, Darshan Shah, realized that there is a huge gap in the industry. The news industry has an enormous number of publishers from Tier 2, 3 & 4 who have authentic content but restricted reach and publishers in Tier 1 have highly functional websites with high traffic. And this realization started our journey as entrepreneurs, working towards bridging the gap in the News Industry.
What attracts you towards entrepreneurship instead of a corporate career?
As mentioned earlier, I have seen the corporate culture closely due to my parents working in the corporate sector & it made me realize that I am clearly not moulded for a corporate career.”
I have always heard that a small change gives a big impact and keeping that in mind, I wanted to do something which impacted lives. The desire to impact lives is what attracted me to entrepreneurship.
‘NewsReach’ 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?
Let me brief you about our startup. We digitise small local news publishers from rural & semi-urban India & monetize their content in two ways, one is through advertisements & another through a platform like an amazon for content buying & selling.
With this concept, we wanted to reach out to the unreached publishers and empower them with a niche in the News Industry, we derived the name NewsReach.
During this COVID-19 crisis, what are the measures you have undertaken to continue your business without disruption?
COVID-19 has affected businesses worldwide. As a Startup, we have always emphasized on the policy of local hiring & coming from the city of Ahmedabad, I must say that we have been positively impacted & nothing has been changed for us.
As the majority of our workforce belongs to the same city & stays within the radius of 20 Kms., re-starting the office as per govt. Guidelines were never a major task. Though we enjoyed our work from home days too during the strict lock-down period.
How do you manage yourself and keep on going despite the challenges? What drives you?
The startup journey is a roller coaster ride. Sometimes in the morning, you feel so blessed that it seems everything is working out so well & till the time it’s evening, you start shedding tears, Oh God, what’s gonna happen. I knew a few founders very well, who have succeeded in their journey & have raised millions of dollars. Just to give you an example, Unacademy raised 50 million dollars during corona times but it took them 6 months long & approx. 70+ investors rejections.
The startup is a journey of a decade with lots of patience & my advice to entrepreneurs is always talk to people from the industry & make them your Guru. Because what it looks gloomy from outside, it’s not always the case. You should be attached with your guru in such a way that they should just be a call away to you. Because they will assess your situation & guide you, whether you should hit six or just duck.”
Team NewsReach
In your opinion – what is more necessary: Idea or a good team for a successful startup?
I feel that idea and a good team go hand in hand for a successful startup. They have their individual importance. Yet, I have my inclination towards having a good team with great intellect.
I strongly believe that when a bad idea meets a good team, the good team wins and when a good idea meets the bad team, the good idea loses.
You have to have a great team with you with complementary skills & as it goes, founders have to be the best salesman. I can proudly say that I am good at sales, Darshan is good at keeping relations & forging business alliances, Tryambak is good at building & scaling technology. And we all have complimentary skills which make our team perfect.
It’s my experience, first 10 people, whom you meet in your startup decides the fate of your startup & essentially that starts with your team.
What is your success mantra?
There are many things said & discussed on the success. Everybody has a different definition of success. For me, Success is a journey & not the destination. Every day you succeed & every day you fail. We keep small goals, if we achieve it, I can say I am successful & if not then I am a failure. But I have the courage to get up & start again.
For me, success is going from one failure to another with the same enthusiasm but in search of success always….
What is the most important lesson you have learned about building your startup?
As I say startup is a journey and I have learned a lot of lessons during this journey of entrepreneurship. But the most important lesson that I have learned was that “Product-Market Fit” is a constant phenomenon.
The market is always dynamic, you need to always figure out, what change you require in your offerings, business models, revenue streams to best suit to the customer needs.
If you are a startup, one thing is certain that the moment you stop innovating in terms of your PMF, you start losing relevance in the market.
Given the rapid pace at which the world is changing, what are the leadership traits that are necessary for success?
I would like to quote my mentor Hiren Shah, here, “When you are the leader, everything is your fault.” Being the COO & head of the organization, I am indirectly responsible for every team member’s actions. Personally, whenever I make a mistake, three steps I follow is to admit the mistake, learn from the mistakes and try not to repeat them again.
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.
