As part of our relentless efforts to identify and share some of the meaningful stories from India and around the world, this week we invited yet another passionate entrepreneur Trombyak Ghosh for an interview with us. He is the Founder and CEO of Maple Herbs – A Health and Wellness e-commerce company, headquartered in India.Let’s read more about his astonishing journey so far and his advice for our growing community!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with him:
We are aware of your contribution to the ecosystem, talk us through your background and your journey as an entrepreneur, please;
So I belong to Kolkata but I graduated from the prestigious Amity School of Engineering & Technology Noida and I live in Delhi.
These two cities taught me the best of both the worlds – Kolkata taught me to be humble and soft-spoken, while Delhi taught me entrepreneurship and business skills. I always had a plan- work with other companies first to learn how a business operates and strengthen my skills before starting my own venture. It’s absolutely necessary to be an employee-first before you become an employer.”
Things you learn and experience as an employee will always guide you to know and understand your employees as an employer later
I had that “what if” thing in me from the very start. I will give you some instances from my school days – I remember coming up with completely different solutions to differential equations, using a different calculus approach while being mathematically correct. I find it very exciting to find flaws in anything, this trait actually helped me a lot while I was working with some big Multi-National Companies.
We are aware of all the good work you are doing in your space, what keeps you going?
Well, it’s the desire to create an impact in the Health and Wellness segment and the idea that Health is the absolute wealth. Our core belief is that human beings all over the world belong to a single community. Following the ideology, we want to cater complete Healthcare solutions to everyone in the community, through the convenience of an intuitive online shopping.
We want to promote the idea of “General Wellness – Everyone in the community has the right to live a healthy life”, by offering best-in-class natural supplements and alternative medicine products from the top brands.
“Prevention is better than Cure”
See, I am a fitness enthusiast myself, hence automatically health conscious– I work out every day. As of now, we do not have a robust nutrition and wellness store in our country. I just wanted to bridge the gap. I believe the future of the world economy will be driven by India. Hence, what happens in India will ring across the world.
That’s the trigger why I started Maple Herbs Private Limited –a Health and wellness e-commerce store. Currently, we are offering Health Supplements, Sports Nutrition, Herbs, Beverages, Baby products, Pet products among others solely through our wellness e-store www.micronutratech.com. We have plans to expand the company’s outreach by incorporating an Omni-channel business setup – Mobile App, Website, Dedicated Store and Phone Shopping.”
Why did you choose entrepreneurship over a corporate career?
My last organization was a Healthcare company dealing with nutrition and supplement products. I was taking care of the Customer Service segment. My new boss told me to never be afraid to give feedback and improve on the customer service. While working for a few weeks, I discovered quite some dissatisfaction among the clients and customers – lack of transparency, politics and blame game between teams, intentional delays in processing orders and shipping etc. With responsibility, in a meeting, I happily shared my viewpoint on those issues. Thereafter, I noticed the management’s disposition toward me changed. My inputs and analysis were hardly appreciated or implemented. I even felt the effects of this in my monthly performance appraisal, where it was noted that I was not supportive of the organization, and I needed to be a better team player. The picture was quite clear – truthful feedback was not appreciated.
A co-worker and friend approached me and said, “You are new, honest feedback is just lip service, don’t fall for it.” I quickly learned loyalists and sycophants were appreciated, while realists were not, rather demeaned. They lacked vision and ethics. No matter how good you worked, how brilliant your presentation is, how critical an idea you had given to resolve a glitch, they were never happy. Would you like to work in an environment without recognition? I knew I had so much to offer, yet I couldn’t. It was time to plan my exit.”
What’s your take on business ethics and how do you plan to do things differently?
According to me, Business Ethics is a reflection of your personal ethics and morality. If you are not honest as a person, you can’t be honest with your clients. Hence the first thing is to care for and value your employees. During my tenure with GE, L&T, Convergys, Dell, Adobe, Intuit among others, I was amazed to see how much they valued their employees because it’s your front-line employees who know your customers best, they interact with them. They have the answers on how to improve customer service and your products. You need to be open to employee feedback.
I will give you an Organizational Wisdom
“You don’t need to take care of your clients, just take care of your employees, they, in turn, will take care of your clients”.
A company that doesn’t listen to their employees is on a slow-rolling disaster. Employees who have been pushed to the point where they no longer care, will not go the extra mile. They will not take the initiative to solve problems. They will end up treating customers the same way you treat them. Employees are the heartbeat of the company. And if the heart stops beating…What will happen?
If you keep treating employees poorly, you will never earn their loyalty. And once employees decide they have had enough, they will leave in spite of what you may try to retain them. Nothing worse than losing a trained and experienced asset. You will be left with regret that the signs were there early on but you ignored it.
It’s important to become “The Leader” then becoming “A Boss”- the difference is very small but huge. A leader encourages and leads, while a boss asks you to do as instructed.
Please share with us some of the challenges that you faced in your journey;
I was lucky enough to have a supporting family, zeal to serve and self-belief. I chose my best friend as a business partner. Challenge is a continuous thing and it is good because you learn every day to find a solution. If there is no challenge, know that you are not doing it right. We faced challenges like sourcing products that we sell, seamless processing, choosing the right shipping partners etc. But our intention was and will always be to serve our customers.
What is your business mantra: Money or Emotions?
I will answer it this way. Off course money is important. You invest money to get good returns, right? But whether you choose easy money and short term approach or continued patronage and long term approach that decides whether you have the fuel to become an established brand. If you do your job right, you will gain the trust and faith of your customers. Our approach is Customer – Centric, which means “we put ourselves in customer’s shoes”. We need to think of the world from the customer’s perspective – meet/exceed their expectations, take fast action against their complaints, protect their interest and make them feel privileged.
Who doesn’t want to feel valued?
As long as the customer is treated like a king – we have his loyalty, we own him.
“Turn customers into brand ambassadors” – we live by it.
How do you handle the pressure and manage stress?
When you do what you really love, other things become negligible. At the end of the day, you will say “Oh! What a day! But it was worth it.” As an entrepreneur, pain is a part of the journey that has to be experienced and enjoyed so you have to embrace it.
“You should hammer iron when it is glowing hot”
Stress, pressure, break downs are all part of an entrepreneur’s journey. It does not matter how many times you fall down, all that takes is how many times you get up.
Our audience would want to know what has worked well for you so far?
We are just in the budding stage and well warmed up to take on anything that may come. We will go multinational soon.
We also have plans to partner with the United Nations and work in the healthcare segment of the underprivileged.
In your opinion what are the keys to success?
We are too young to define success, but yes the journey has been pretty exciting – we learned a lot, rectified our mistakes, explored some unknown spots and we are confident to become a trusted global brand.
We would love to know your advice for all those starting out as an aspiring entrepreneur?
An inspirational quote –
“You are what you believe in. You become that which you believe you can become” – Bhagavad Gita
There is no right time to be an entrepreneur. All you need is an idea to make an impact. When you fail, don’t think that all is lost. That failure will teach you to do things in a different and better way.
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.
