You can’t beat someone who doesn’t quit. Meet the Fearless Farah of e-commerce who plays golf and loves wine

“I know Anisha, you can do it.”

These simple words from her professor at Business School at US, William Dalone, made Anisha Singh the CEO of India’s largest local services marketing platform, mydala. And, as they say the journey is never easy, it was no different for her too. From the days of fighting for chairs she has come a long way in their hunky dory new office with more than enough chairs for 450 employees.

mydala started at a time when the dotcom environment hasn’t really matured. When they started to recruit they realised people have to be really crazy to come on board and share their vision as they were the first of its kind in the market. This golf-lover was eight months pregnant when she along with two other raised the company. People did doubt her. But this never led to her to quit.

“It is my high.”

With a team of 40 crazy people onboard, they set out to raise funds. They were lucky enough to get angel funding quickly and also got three term sheets. But they met with one of the most unfortunate events mydala has faced so far. They ended up picking the term sheet that eventually did not work for them on the terms. They lost the case as neither was they experts in these nor did they have a good lawyer. This was a lesson that will stay with her forever.

“What happened was that every competitor was better funded than us. We decided not to quit but try explaining that to your team when they are getting poached left right and centre from competitors. Our team was supposed to be the killer team as we started earlier; we knew everything. It was a choice, are we going to survive and grow this or are we going to shut it down.”

They also lost out on a lot of employees during this time, who quit after being poached by competitors pressure.

“Do not compromise on a good lawyer because that is the person who will negotiate on terms that will stay with your company for a lifetime. “

Thriving on innovation, mydala fought its way to the top. In 2011, when nobody was talking mobile, they went on mobile so aggressively that 85 per cent of their traffic and transactions are from the mobile phone. They were the first in the market to transform aggressively to mobile and this worked in their favour giving them an edge over the others.

“You can’t beat someone who does not quit.”

Not only this, those who left wanted to come back and some of them did.

“I left for a better opportunity. I worked at another company for two years. I realised the amount of freedom you get to explore and grow your abilities at a startup was not there elsewhere. Where can you go upto the CEO and tell her that she is wrong whenever she was. Anisha was always different,” said Nikhil Bhatnagar, product manager, mydala.

Numbers speak more about success than words

From being the black sheep of the family, they have become the head of the family. mydala turned profitable two years ago. From a team of 18, they increased their strength to 450 in six years and envision doubling it by the end of this year and growing ten times in the end of three years. From the current 600,000 outlets they plan to partner out 5 million outlets in the next three years. They also plan to expand to 1.2 m merchants in the next 3 years.

Anisha believes that always trying to solve a puzzle is the mantra to her win. There’s no point in building the same structure that is already there. We should think how our idea can make a difference in the scenario.

With their 85 per cent mobile transfer and transactions via mobile, they have 50 million active users a month.

What needs to be changed?

South Asian statistics suggest that women leave their work space the moment they give birth. They enter the field, accomplish a lot and leave. There is not enough of support for us in terms of entrepreneurship, acknowledges Anisha.

“But that should not stop us from anything. If there is no support system for us, we have to create one for ourselves.”

Apart from our own mindshifts, there are faults at the government as well as business level. Infrastructure shifts have to happen.

We need more government policies supporting women entrepreneurs.

Although we keep hearing about micro-loans but the banks themselves lack the knowledge about these.

Business shifts have to happen with more of them supporting businesses driven by women.

“Although there are an increasing number of women at the managerial level, we need more women on board.”

“All female happy hours once a month and go-crazy DJ nights were brought in by her as a part of work profile of the company”

“People at mydala love to dance a lot and hence every Friday night, the town hall is transformed into a burning dance floor where everyone just goes dances away their blues.”

Apart from encouraging the female employees constantly, Anisha started all female happy hours too.

“If you drink and hang out, people would get to know each other well and there wouldn’t be any hostile environment,” said the wine-lover.

Success Mantra

Last but not the least, Anisha states her success mantra to be less sleep that helps her juggle through work and her family with two daughters (1 year-old and 5 year-old) like a pro.

(Image credits: zenogroup)