At BrilliantRead Media, we always strive to bring to our community some of the finest stories from the entrepreneurship world. As part of this endeavour, we invited yet another passionate entrepreneur – Sugam Jain for an exclusive interview with us. He is a Seasoned Entrepreneur, Business Leader, and Strategist. Sugam is the Founder and CEO at Shyplite. Let’s learn more about his inspiring journey, his background and his advice for our growing community!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Sugam Jain:
We are aware of your contribution to the ecosystem, talk us through your background and your journey as an entrepreneur, please;
My journey as an entrepreneur started 12 years back in the digital domain while I was completing my higher education. Post which I co-founded my first startup GoPaisa.com which is one of the top cashback websites of India & had my own e-commerce venture too.”
In 2014, when I started my own e-commerce store focused on baby products and toys on all major marketplaces, I fairly scaled the business to 150 orders per day, but the company could not keep pace with growth as all my time went into logistics management. I found that existing logistics solutions did not fit business requirements or budgets. This is where I realized a gap that existed in logistics management and the only available solutions in the market were online aggregators.
In 2015, Parinay, Nisschal and I, huddled together on how to solve these logistics problems faced by e-commerce sellers, having tackled several such pain points being sellers ourselves. It was then we birthed the idea for Shyplite- a platform for logistics automation and management.”
All in all, I have always been passionate about enabling businesses with technology with a strong focus on the quality of service and I believe Shyplite stands apart in the market today on similar grounds.
What attracts you towards entrepreneurship instead of a corporate career?
I would say entrepreneurship has a lot of imagination and perhaps even a dash of courage decked together. I chose entrepreneurship solely because I always wanted to build something of my own and see it grow, creating value for businesses.
Though it takes a lot of hard work, perseverance, teamwork, and long hours in planning a good strategy for your business, but it’s more fascinating to see how you build something from scratch to build an empire around it, which creates an impact going forward.”
My entrepreneurial journey with Shyplite has been really great so far and it gives me immense pleasure to know that our 90% of customers say that their ease & focus on expanding their businesses has increased because of Shyplite.
‘Shyplite’ 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?
Shyplite originated from the idea of making the shipping journey painless and hassle-free for businesses. We are a full-service single shipping gateway delivering customers with 360-degree logistics support for their businesses by covering key capabilities like fulfilment, cross-border logistics, e-commerce logistics and bulk deliveries.
They can tap the most cost-efficient carriers for their deliveries and manage every minute and massive shipping element proficiently using their Shyplite account.
The name Shyplite was conceptualized keeping in mind the simplicity element that we are trying to imbibe in the complex of shipping and logistics.
Today, we have emerged as the most trusted shipping gateway to thousands of businesses, providing them resourcefulness and helping them delight their customers every single day.
During this COVID-19 crisis, what are the measures you have undertaken to continue your business without disruption?
The COVID pandemic in 2020 brought new challenges for the team. Shyplite was on a stellar scaling and growth trajectory, and we remember our struggle to stay afloat, coordinating operations in the middle of containment zones and movement restrictions.
Adapting to a work-from-home model and recovering to business-as-usual as the e-commerce industry found its feet in the post-pandemic world was really demanding. The business definitely surged in size & revenue during this period. The recovery from the pandemic was quick for online businesses.
And as lockdown restrictions eased nationwide, few of our team members re-started their office commute in Jan’21. But work from the office is still a hybrid model for us, based on the project to project requirements with complete safety and sanitization norms followed.
In fact, during the pandemic, we are proud to share that pertaining to our core values and a strong focus on employee welfare, there were no layoffs and pay cuts in our organization.
How do you manage yourself and keep on going despite the challenges? What drives you?
My own team drives that motivation in me. I believe when all of us are doing something that we are passionate about, then we never feel overburdened and things at work go really smooth and well. Hence I’ve always encouraged and hired young professionals with a spirit of raw entrepreneurship and ownership in them.
What are the business mantras you have embraced as you sought to establish your success story?
~ Since inception, our business core values have been sheerly based on being customer-success centric, robust, innovative & transparent.
~ The other important aspect which has contributed to our success today is our work culture. We are sincerely endowed in the well-being and growth of our people. We love to listen to our employees and encourage meaningful and constructive communication.
Please share with us – what has worked well for you so far?
One thing that has worked the most for us is that we listen and care for our clients. Manifesting a first-rate delivery experience to their customers remains the cornerstone of all that we do at Shyplite. We find our success in enabling their business towards limitless expansion.
In your opinion, what is more necessary: An idea or a good team for a successful startup?
It’s always significant to know if the company has a clear path to generate revenues. With that path comes the right idea implemented at the right time. But there’s no denying to the fact that only a good team is more likely to figure out how to make that idea work.
No business has ever taken off just based on a good idea. And nobody has ever scaled a business from the ground up alone. The team is the most important factor in all your wins. Therefore, for me, it has to be a mix of both to succeed in a startup.
You are always positive and motivated, what keeps you going?
It’s because I love what I do. It also feels great to see those happy customers, being benefited from our business solution. We have few clients who have scaled from doing 5-10 orders a day to over 100 orders a day within a span of a few quarters due to the ease of logistics management. It keeps me going every day to think about what more we can provide them and bring a difference to their entrepreneurial journey.
We would love to know your advice for all those starting out as an aspiring entrepreneur?
1 – Don’t expect overnight success. It’s a myth! There is a major difference between overnight success & early success. That overnight success of young entrepreneurs you see is actually the market realizing the value of a great product or service that had been kept in anonymity for too long while those creators refused to give up.
2 – If you choose entrepreneurship as your career then at some point you will definitely fail. Whether that failure is large or small, it’s inevitable. All you need to have is faith, determination & confidence in yourself and your team. Use those setbacks as an advantage to make informed future decisions.
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.
