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Building Women's Internet | Sairee Chahal @ Sheroes
144 Plays5 years ago
“We will see in our lifetime a generation of products being built online only for women” - Sairee Chahal.
Founder of Sheroes - a social networking site exclusively for women, Sairee is a pioneer in building up women at work and future-of-work conversations in India. She has several accolades under her belt, such as Devi Award, Femina Achievers Award, Cartier Award, Editor’s choice for L’Oreal Femina Women’s Award, Business Today and others. She is a tech-entrepreneur who is passionate about women’s internet & has championed the cause of levelling gender disparity in India.
In this episode, we spoke to Sairee about her journey from her days of being a Russian Literature Major to the inception, growth & future of Sheroes. Here are our key takeaways from this episode:
- How to build a social networking platform & community.
- How to monetize a social network.
- Using a helpline feature as a means to build consumer trust.
- The truths about networking.
- How to manage & hire for remote working teams.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to HT Smartcast
00:00:02
Speaker
H.T. Smartcast. You are listening to an H.T. Smartcast original.
Introducing the Founder Thesis Podcast
00:00:23
Speaker
Hi, I'm Akshay. Hi, this is Aurob. And you are listening to the Founder Thesis Podcast. We meet some of the most celebrated sort of founders in the country. And we want to learn how to build a unicorn.
Building a Safe Online Space for Women
00:00:38
Speaker
Hi, I'm Sairi, founder of Steedos. There's one thing I really care about. It's building women's internet and glad to be here. I have been in a work from home job for quite some time now. And it has nothing to do with the coronavirus.
00:00:54
Speaker
I just happened to find an employer who was building a remote team. And working from home has actually boosted my career like never before. So, I am truly excited about this episode. Today, Akshay Dutta is talking to the pioneer who introduced India to the power of women working in remote teams. Sairi Chehel, the founder of Sheroes.
00:01:22
Speaker
Sheroes is a platform for women who are heroes in their own right. Sairi built Sheroes as a safe haven for women on the internet, a place where they can be themselves, where they can learn, build careers, build businesses and make friends. Let us hear about the creation and journey of Sheroes.
Growing Up and Family Influences
00:01:57
Speaker
So Sari, I believe you grew up in Muzaffarpur. So tell me about growing up in like a tier 2, tier 3 town in Hindi Heartland. What was the experience? So actually, Muzaffar Nagar is not Muzaffarpur. Although, I don't know if you guys have heard of it, but I know that tier 2 or tier 3 is one of the most popular blogs in the world.
00:02:23
Speaker
You know, life is very different back then. Technology may be internet, books were the only real means of information you had. So life was slow, I think, and life didn't have many options.
00:02:38
Speaker
Tell me about your family. What were your parents doing? My dad's a steel industry engineer. He basically expands and renovates steel plants. My mom
Early Career and Education
00:02:49
Speaker
is a homemaker now, but she's a revolutionary in herself. She was the first girl in an all-boys school. Then she went to do a lot of work with family planning, the Association of India.
00:03:03
Speaker
more active and more liberal of the two parents. But my dad sort of gave me a lot of things that I still carry, you know, with me today. Reading as a habit, you know, finding time for walks and yourself, having a very large professional circle. So these are things I think I sort of got from my dad. And my dad's a quiet person. My mom's a very talkative person.
00:03:28
Speaker
And I'm a mix of both. So I think it's interesting how you pick up. I have a younger sister who's complete opposite of who I am. We used to fight a lot when we were kids and tease each other. But now we don't live together. She lives in Bangalore. I live in Delhi. So what were your childhood dreams while growing up? What did you think you'd grow up to be?
00:03:52
Speaker
Right, so I definitely knew what I didn't want to be, I think, first of all. So, you know, the competitive culture was at its peak. And you know, in small town, schools didn't even have like the liberal arts stream, like the arts was for losers. This was which decade? This is 90s, 94. So I was very clear, Dr. Nigbana, her engineer named Nigbana.
00:04:24
Speaker
I think that was the growing up sentiment. In fact, I remember I had a diary where I'd written a bunch of things where I wanted to be. So it included every researcher, social scientist, writer, entrepreneur, a bunch of things that were not doctors and engineers. So, and I think given how much I've experimented, so I think it's out of control now.
00:04:49
Speaker
And when I was a kid, I remember setting up library for the children in the colony, because I thought sub-book, a Bora Ren. So I, I collected books from all over, mostly mine and from my friends. We started renting books. It was called SNJC library. Yeah.
00:05:09
Speaker
me in my sister's name basically and I think one of those sentiments when I was growing up was that life needs to be more you know this me canvas true time and love also
00:05:22
Speaker
feeling here, the need to show and the need to sort of like expand your horizons. Sentiment bought clearly, you know, like I've carried it with me, I think, or inside me for a long time. So, and then I finished school and I left Njapana Road.
00:05:44
Speaker
So by finish school you mean like the 12th board you gave and then you left? Yes. My dad was like no stay with us until you are in school. So I left after 12th and moved to Delhi then to JNU of all places.
00:06:05
Speaker
So then Virginia started working very early on. I think the big change in my life happened because I started working very, very early.
Co-founding Link Services and Its Acquisition
00:06:14
Speaker
And so by the time I finished my master's, I had already worked for like four years.
00:06:20
Speaker
So which course did you join in JNU? I have a master's in Russian literature. So how did you start working in JNU? You were staying on the campus only? Yeah, I was on the campus and I stumbled upon what became my first assignment and I think once you start working then you know it's like taste of blood.
00:06:37
Speaker
you can't stop it, you know, and I think once your network gets, you know, word gets out, so my first assignment was actually giving tuitions to this couple in Ministry of External Affairs. They used to come every week to campus to take Russian lessons from me, you know, it was nice money for that time, it was nice, you know, nice to sort of spend your time doing something else.
00:07:00
Speaker
And because I did that one assignment, everybody in MEA knew that this is the person to go to fortutions if you got posted to Moscow. So, you know, that happened. And because MEA knew me, then M.Bessie's got to know me once, and Bessie's knew me, then, you know, like, you know, this whole ecosystem is quite small again, you know, the ministry and other people who work in closed coordination with the ministry. So I did a lot of jobs, translation, PR, writing,
00:07:30
Speaker
tuition, whatever we sold, okay might be whatever paid but you know kind of set the tone for professional living. You're expected to show up and when you're working with you know government and ambassadors then you obviously sort of learn the business you know the decorum you learned much earlier much faster.
00:07:53
Speaker
And by the time I got out of G&E, I couldn't get out, I had enrolled for my info. But by the time I finished my master's, I again stumbled upon what became my first startup. So I built a company back in the day in 1999. We set out to build what became world's first newspaper for mariners. We built a company called Link Services.
00:08:19
Speaker
Basically, I think that merchant navy ships pay, you know, there are about 30-40,000 merchant navy ships that sail on any given day. And every ship has, you know, about 25-30 nationalities, right? So, sailors come from, you know, developing world. India, Philippines, Spain, Poland, and
00:08:40
Speaker
Sailor depression is a big, nasty problem because there's no news from them. We are away, cut out on the sea for any months on end. So we built a product where we would stream everyday news and sort of curate it a bit, put it in a country edition so India would get an Indian edition and our Filipina would get a Filipino edition and so on. Once a day we would get a satellite connection.
00:09:03
Speaker
two sailing ships who download this on the deck, print it on and then distribute it to sailors. So sailors started getting with me every day. And beginners luck, hello. I have no idea about the shipping business. I had never been on a ship. This was somebody else's item, somebody else's money. But really nice boy. I think he was kind enough to give me a chance to go, you know, shock.
00:09:27
Speaker
What was the monetization strategy here? Were the sailors paying for it? I mean, how did you make money in this?
Transition to Sheroes and Women's Online Representation
00:09:35
Speaker
So the shipping companies would pay. So basically, we would sell via shipping companies. We had a sales office in Cyprus and a production office in Delhi.
00:09:51
Speaker
So shipping companies would buy it for the number of ships and the number of sailors they have and enable it. So the company would buy the subscription. We would make the subscription live. And it was a prepaid product. So we had about two thirds of the market. But we could go in, did that for three, four years. Very intense work. Learned how to build a company. Startups, hiring, products.
00:10:20
Speaker
I did not hear this, but learned from the job, learned from the goal, worked really hard, I think, harder than anybody else can. And yeah, and then left it up to four years after the company got acquired. It was up and running during 25, 26 editions.
00:10:40
Speaker
So did you make money when it got acquired? Like how significant was your stake in it? So look, I didn't invest a lot of money in it. I was, I was the founding team. So I didn't make a lot of money or any significant money, but I was better off than my peers. So that was good enough.
00:10:57
Speaker
So around 2003 or 2004, it must have got acquired. Yes, yes. Then I moved out, got married, worked, started working with the CII a little bit. I still had my Russia roots, so started working on the Russia, set up the Russia office. It was time for a government worker to pay.
00:11:19
Speaker
took the Vajpayee government to Moscow. There was this big President Putin-Vajpayee summit which we sat down. And what was your husband doing at this time? My husband is a journalist. Okay, okay. So did you like meet on the job types or it was just coincidence? Not really. I was doing a small stint at a company called A&M before NewsLink.
00:11:49
Speaker
And he used to work for the Bangalore office at the same company, but we never worked together. He still doesn't wonder who's this person.
00:11:57
Speaker
So that's how I met him. And then worked with CII, found an assignment, hung out with the Russians, had lots of water, lots of fun, and then Moscow. Life was good, I believe. But CII was very slow. After New Zealand, CII was like a nice little sabbatical, to be honest. From a face and a freedom, I think startups may not, you get spoiled.
00:12:22
Speaker
ask anyone for anything any more. They'll have to do money after a little because they'll start to think of
Evolution of Sheroes into a Social Network
00:12:28
Speaker
something. But CIA is an eight-hour old organization. Anyway, so did that and then quit in about a year's time, year and a half, and then started working with this company called Hydric & Struggles, which is a leadership consulting firm. Did again about a year, year and a half of that.
00:12:49
Speaker
a really good job, very well-being job, not long. I still feel that that was the least amount of work I did for the max amount of money I made. Very large organization, 64 offices worldwide kind of organization. A beautiful amount of money, you know, leadership styles were very different. So it didn't seem like such a lot of work. So move on from there as well.
00:13:16
Speaker
Okay. Then what next? Yeah. And then I set up my first, my first company called Saita Consulting to work with tech startups. You know, by this time, the first series A and you know, not really had happened, make my trip had happened, India Mart had happened, 197 was there. So, you know, I think the normal scene was beginning to happen in India. And this is 2005. So I set up 2006.
00:13:46
Speaker
and then work with a bunch of tech startups to, you know, have them put things in place, systems, processes, SOPs, things that you need to do for scale as a founder, but a lot of the full incentives may look like a sector, you know, they're not revenue generating, they're not IP generating, but they need to be done. So did that for five years, and then set up shoes.
00:14:11
Speaker
Okay, so what was the genesis behind Seros? Why did you decide to set it up? So you shut down that consulting business, Cyta Consulting? No, no, I quit. I left it to my partner and moved out of it and then set up shoes.
00:14:29
Speaker
But the genesis of Cheetos was really, really simple. I had practically seen internet grow in India, from, let's say, 99 onwards to, let's say, 2010, when the ecosystem came alive in those 10 years.
00:14:46
Speaker
I grew up in small towns. I knew women never had a voice. But I always felt that women also are not represented adequately online.
00:15:06
Speaker
That was the fundamental form. And of course, you know, by this time I worked for a long time, I worked across organizations that built my own experience. And I always felt that, you know, I mean, and of course, all our academics, if you look at it, you know, within academic lens, all our numbers don't add up either women and workforce numbers,
00:15:29
Speaker
women and leadership numbers, reproductive health numbers, Apcoibi number of colleges, gender-civilators, it's really the bottom of the path. And so Sheroes was set up fundamentally to help more women keep their careers and grow in their careers. So the first version of Sheroes was a jobs and careers community for women. And the idea was that internet is such a great thing to happen to us and we must use it to make sure more women are connected to workforce and more women have careers and they can make a living.
00:15:59
Speaker
And this is obviously, this is 2014, 2013, 2013. India had maybe 10 million women online at that time, mostly in mattress.
00:16:08
Speaker
you know, the number women on language skills at all times, but so we built a product for that. So there's a full-fledged career community, there were resources, there were companies, there were peers, there were mentors, there were, you know, it was a full stack of a career community. And we went to get more support, look for work, find flexible work, find advice, you know, whatever helped them keep the careers.
00:16:33
Speaker
FlexiMoms and Sheroes was the same stint only or these were two different stints? FlexiMoms was while we were still excited. So it was really set out as a small experiment, but not really as a separate business at that point. So there was a question to say, what do you want to do? You want to run a boutique business, you want to open your internet. So Sheroes was a brand new start in the same category, but FlexiMoms was a much smaller experiment.
00:17:03
Speaker
FlexiMoms was what exactly? So FlexiMoms was honestly a very simple experiment that went viral. So you know one day at Shaita we basically said let's put up a platform where women can you know find flexible work and companies can talk to them.
00:17:22
Speaker
We got a developer invite out to make a very simple website with two forms on it that are FlexiMoms but because we were the first and I think very very early in the game and I think FlexiMoms apparently if you looked up flexible work or work from home or you know back to work these things didn't exist and most of the internet was very scammy you know you would get all these get rich quick scams and
00:17:47
Speaker
or things like that. These were the first ones to go to corporates, you know, the big corporates, mine bras and tatas, to sort of get them to sign up. And I think that sort of triggered, triggered a whole wave, you know, and that's what inspired us to also set out, you know, to build heroes in a real, real way, you know. So Fleck was an experiment that went viral, and he really liked the result of that.
00:18:14
Speaker
Okay, so you started Sheroes as a career destination. And this was monetized by the employers. I assume they would have paid for listing jobs. Yes. So listing jobs, hiring for men services, everything. So what kind of services, diversity, you know, policies, programs, back to work programs, events, you know, things around.
00:18:40
Speaker
And, you know, for about three years, worked well. We had about 20,000 companies. You know, there was a time when we used to be number one, and LinkedIn and us used to be number two and number three. So, it was nice, nice Ferrari role. So, as she does, we've always run a helpline, which is how women could talk to us, you know, barely with online work, chat helpline Monday, but that helpline always existed.
The Role of Helpline in Trust Building
00:19:09
Speaker
And what we realized was that women coming to us are changing. So clearly, all in hindsight, GEO was happening, WhatsApp was happening. New wave of users were getting on.
00:19:33
Speaker
So we really went back to the drawing board to say, wow, this is something we wouldn't have really imagined when we first set out. But look, it's happening right here. So 2018 rebooted Sheroes relaunched as the social network development. And the idea was to want to build a larger base and to build for more than one use case. So it's a network of communities built around interests.
00:20:00
Speaker
of women and women can build their own communities. So it's a safe space for women to find whatever they might be looking for.
00:20:11
Speaker
looking for work, looking for advice, looking for a safe space, looking to hang out, looking to share content, looking to set up a shop online, looking to buy and sell, looking to post recipes. So it's a community of women, only women, where they can do a bunch of things. It's their social network.
00:20:34
Speaker
I have multiple questions to ask you before we move ahead in the story. So you had a helpline in the previous Aftara series. What was the business case for that helpline? I mean, this was like a free service to women. What was the reason behind doing that?
00:20:53
Speaker
Though, look, there is no business case. So helpline is not a monetized product. It's a feature. It's a feature. It's a service we offer. But the way I look at it is that helpline is a way for us to learn about the market.
00:21:06
Speaker
You know, women's internet is a new help, right? Most people don't even think it's a category. But the truth is we will see in our lifetime a generation of products being built online only for women, okay? And I think heroes will have like a significant stake in that story. But the helpline, the helpline is a way to understand users and it's also
00:21:29
Speaker
It's a huge data engine for us to draw insights and trends. And the helplines also a way for us to build trust. One of the reasons women use internet less and less is because it's a low trust environment. And we want to make sure that trust is maintained at all times.
00:21:47
Speaker
The helpline is basically a seeding of trust, as we know. And we don't charge for it. It still runs, by the way. In the COVID era, we're using it to help people resolve their anxiety issues or violence issues. Over 2 million queries have been answered on that line. So it's kind of, it's a piece for community support. It's not a business case.
00:22:15
Speaker
But I imagine that would have been quite expensive to run. You would need a lot of agents who would be answering these calls. So actually, not calls. Counselors. And it's a chat hotline. So only for a period in time, it was an agent and they had a phone line. In fact, those were the days when I used to personally answer the three-year calls, so you would take turns to keep the company phone.
00:22:41
Speaker
No, it's a counseling helpline. There are verified counselors available to talk to you around 9 to 5. Working hours, you can speak to a counselor. It still runs. It is an investment, but we think it's an investment that's worth it.
00:22:57
Speaker
You know, and from what we get from the helpline, I think it's totally worth it. And also, you know, it also depends on the business strategy. You know, Shiroz has never been a push strategy. They have nothing to sell. We don't do incessant advertising. We don't do retargeting. We don't tell people to download our app. We just don't do any of that stuff that we like ourselves. So our users can reach out to us and talk to us, and we appreciate that.
00:23:24
Speaker
Okay. And my second question is, why did you shut down the job posting? I mean, these could have existed in parallel also, like a social network and a job site. No, no, no, I think Pahati would love impossible situation. And I'll tell you why the job seeker is the most unfaithful user in the world.
00:23:46
Speaker
Okay, they have no intention to come back, you know, nobody wants to go to a job site. Okay. And the other thing that we wanted to do was to run a workforce business today, but it's an enterprise business.
From Job Postings to Community-Centric Approach
00:24:01
Speaker
We changed the model. In fact, now we help more women find work than we ever did.
00:24:07
Speaker
But the job posting business was a very low, no trust business because you could post a job and you can apply for a job, but as a company you would not have a hire and as a person you would not have a job. Because there was nobody who was sort of making sure this was happening or nobody was curating that experience, nobody was owning the stack.
00:24:28
Speaker
Right. So the job pool model is a highly inefficient model and there's no way it can exist in a community setting for two reasons. One, the kind of users come to us are not traditional job seekers anymore. They're micro entrepreneurs, they call them internet users, they're two, three, four, five users, they use vernacular, they're not all English speakers.
00:24:52
Speaker
And look, jobs in India haven't grown. The footprint of women in the workforce has actually shrunk. It's not increased. Because as jobs don't grow, women are not going to get the replacement jobs. Those are held by men, and they continue to be held by men.
00:25:09
Speaker
And unfortunately, that's where we are. And so between the two, and I think also from a product thesis, you have to sort of own the thesis of the product. If you want to build a social network, there's no way you can build a job site with it. I think they're very contradictory, and their design fundamentally is very, very divergent.
00:25:33
Speaker
So, you do have LinkedIn as an example where, you know, community and jobs both exist side by side. So, I mean, you know, there is... Yeah, but a LinkedIn user is a corporate user. Our user is a very diverse user, right? And it does, it can exist, but LinkedIn is actually, I mean, I don't think the job seekers are personally enhancing the experience of LinkedIn for most of us, right? So, I mean, yes, it's a great tool for
00:26:02
Speaker
for, you know, going out and looking to work. But I think the context is very, very different. You know, in our context, it didn't fit in. And, you know, also from the design of the product, what are we trying to do today? I think the direction we are going, we are, we are working on a super, super massy, and it's super high engagement. Jobs somehow don't allow it. Even at LinkedIn scale, which is global, you know, everybody in the corporate world,
00:26:32
Speaker
You know, you can't be somebody who's a small player in a very large category. You know, if you're a social network and you're a job site and then you're a subset of that, you're really left with nothing by end of the day. If you're a job site, at least you're a formidable job site, right? I mean, LinkedIn would look at that stuff. But you try to do both, that's just a loss of focus.
00:26:57
Speaker
So once you decided to pivot to a social network, what was the monetization strategy then?
Monetization Strategies of Sheroes
00:27:05
Speaker
Right. So look, the monetization strategy in social networks is very hard. But the thesis is that women are the best internet users there are. Everybody wants to sort of reach out to women. And two women themselves are high engagement users. And what we wanted to do was set up an ecosystem that we can build and monetize over a period of time. So we have
00:27:30
Speaker
you know, three things that are sort of fill out of this. We have workforce, which is an enterprise business beyond shipping. We have brands, which is, you know, a business that kind of is helping us scale the platform as well. And then we have peer to peer commerce, which is, you know, women using the platform to buy and sell, you know, amongst themselves, not selling to us or buying from us.
00:27:59
Speaker
So that's what is the whole thing. Okay. And could you tell me more about each of these, like how they're performing and like, you know, contribution to top line and if you can share some numbers also. Right. So our commerce business is only three months old, but it's during my sense is that it will overtake everything else that we've put in place so far. We have a workhorse business, which is actually our... So the commerce business is...
00:28:25
Speaker
Sorry, on the commerce business only. So, essentially, anybody could list a product and you would take care of the payments, but not the logistics or the logistics also. How would it operate? Basically, have you heard of a platform called Poshmark?
00:28:42
Speaker
No, sorry. Social content plus selling. So first, there is a lot of social content around what you want to sell. So it's not a listings platform. It's not an O L X. It's more of a postmark or there's an app called Red in China.
00:28:59
Speaker
That's again. So content-driven safe, if you will, and some features to folks who are building content in conversations to monetize that safe, to either close that transaction or to acquire a customer. And as we grow, what we do is we are basically offering a bunch of tools to women on the network who set up their online shops.
00:29:26
Speaker
and helping them inventory from other brands. So D2C brands, we are the silent platform here and we don't do logistics or anything offline but we do bring on board D2C brands, we bring on board a lot of people who want to distribute using the Netflix and then we enable women who want to be micro entrepreneurs who want to have their online shop.
00:29:51
Speaker
Okay. And what is the workforce business about? Right. So the workforce business is a simple business. Basically, it's funny that everybody's talking about remote work now, and women always wanted to work from home, but it was always around the park. But what we did was we created a remote work certification. So women had to set themselves up as a ready to work remotely worker. And we shut off
00:30:19
Speaker
put them on jobs that came from large companies, but in a scalable operational sort of way. So imagine running social media processes for a flip-flop or a mentor. Or imagine walking back in photo from a video or a black bar.
00:30:34
Speaker
So, large scale operational, SLA driven processes for companies that have typically technology enabled stacks. So, news for companies that are scaling fast and don't want to invest offline.
00:30:54
Speaker
So that whole piece is managed by Sheroes. The business is for Mars, managed to make solutions. You can look it up at marsbysheroes.com. It's an enterprise business and work with some very different partners there. About 10,000 women work via this and now we are seeing huge sores in this demand.
00:31:19
Speaker
All right, okay. What kind of revenue does that do if you're comfortable sharing? Let's not put revenue out there, there are VCs out there.
00:31:28
Speaker
Sure, sure, sure. And the brands business? Yeah, so the brands business is basically brands building their presence on the users platform. So building their communities per se. So most consumer brands or any brands that want to sell to consumers, financial services, FMCG, appliances, consumer durables, all these brands have certain needs. The need for insights, the need for sampling, the need to
00:31:57
Speaker
You know, talk to users, the need for engagement.
00:32:00
Speaker
the need to create awareness, a lot of things which are not abominable, or direct sales. So we work with brands in creating solutions using this heroes platform for that. So typically a brand would invest in creating a community, we would have them set up, scale, according to their business objectives. So yeah, so there we work with a bunch of brands, some large brands, some small brands.
00:32:31
Speaker
So that's our brand's business. Okay, okay. So you've had three rounds of funding so far at Siro's. Could you tell us about that journey? Like, how did you do the first fundraise? And was it very difficult to convince VCs about the Siro story and the subsequent rounds?
Support from Early Investors
00:32:49
Speaker
Right.
00:32:50
Speaker
So look, I think the first time we raised money was actually, I have to say, we had some of the best backers in town. So when I set up the company, I put in my savings and Vijay Shekhar matched it. He was the first investor in the company.
00:33:06
Speaker
Rajan was the second investor, then Bini Bansal was the third investor. How did they come on board? What was that process like? Or is it like you had a relationship existing and therefore that built the trust? Or did you pitch to them? What was that process like? Look, I'd known most of them. Vijay Shikra known for many years. And Bini, I'd known.
00:33:32
Speaker
Arjun, I known as well, in fact, was the person who encouraged me to raise money faster than I should, you know, so yeah, even before she was set up, we were kind of committed. So these guys were super helpful and Rago Bell was an early investor, again, somebody had known some professional roles.
00:33:54
Speaker
and getting ish from Freshworks in this case on Krishna Mera, 500 startup. And then we sort of raised money, then we raised another institution around. But most of the money we raised was when we were a workforce business. And we raised money when we were a consumer business. It's kind of strange, but that's true.
00:34:24
Speaker
Look, I think none of these guys are VCs and the reason we set up shielders was because there's a very real problem in the room and there's a real story, there's a real challenge here. As a society, as a country, as an economy, everybody gets it. I think from a problem statement point of view, it's slam dunk.
00:34:48
Speaker
And I think people were kind enough to sort of come on board because they know that I'm committed to it. But at the same time, I think every investor is not for every startup. I mean, not every startup is feasible for every investor. So, you know, venture has its venture as an asset class, you know, and then LPGP model is a very
00:35:17
Speaker
It's a very lean model. It doesn't apply itself to a lot of business situations, right, or a lot of pieces. And the return it expects is obviously very, very different from any regular asset class. So I think more than anything, it's just the
00:35:38
Speaker
of the asset class, right, that, you know, so VC is not a fit for everyone. We have raised VC money, or just for reference, we have real capital, as an investor, we have famous partners, as an investor, but clearly, you know, I think the pieces of the VCs matter a lot.
00:36:03
Speaker
And we do think we don't apply. We're not traditional. We aren't fintech. We aren't great members. Okay. So, you know, I think something which you are probably intrinsically very good at is networking and building a network. And to some extent, even your business is about building a network and to do networking. And I've seen that a lot of women.
00:36:30
Speaker
hesitate to do networking and you know if you were to make a list of top hundred people who are good at networking and maybe 10 or 20 of them would be women and 80 of them would be men so what is the secret to networking you know how do you build your personal network and really because it opens a lot of doors for you and so you know do you have advice on that right so I always say don't think of a network when you need it right like you have to build a network before you need it and
00:37:00
Speaker
Maybe you'll never meet it. I think you have to intrinsically enjoy the process. I personally enjoy meeting people. I genuinely enjoy them. I don't care whether I get something from them or not. I'm happy to help, but I really don't have an agenda to networking. I'm happy talking to people.
00:37:22
Speaker
for who they are and what they're building. I'm curious to learn about their journeys. So I think networking is really not an outcome-based process. And you don't know what will work for you, what will transpire. I think you have to leave some scope for serendipitous encounters to happen. So I think I never really thought of this as networking. All throughout, people started telling me that you network. And I'm like, OK.
00:37:52
Speaker
this is what you call it these days because most of my jobs were such when I didn't need a lot of people right from the time when I was helping Emmy out and the Bessie's out, working with CII, working with consulting firm, running my own business. Each of these jobs required a lot of relationships. So it took a period of time before they got there and I built them with a sense of
00:38:22
Speaker
without doing them with joy,
Networking and Relationship Building
00:38:25
Speaker
right? Because these were people you worked with, people you interacted with, people you came in touch with. So, honestly, it was done much like me than what it seems like today. And given a choice, even today, I wouldn't sort of step out, sort of make work. Unless, you know, I'm excited about the conversation we're gonna have, or unless there is really
00:38:52
Speaker
something that's interesting that's happening. So for me, networking was never networking. It was just sort of enjoying talking to people and working with them all along. And I do think, as women, we're kind of not encouraged to do this. I think a little bit of why this comes naturally to me is because I spend most of my childhood hanging out with my dad, who
00:39:17
Speaker
who was insane the most. We always had, you know, visitors from all over the world, you know, come in and drop in for lunch, drop in for dinner. We always entertained when we had guests at home. And I would always not, you know, when my dad was having business competitions. And I learned to enjoy them a lot. Like, I really enjoyed their dark conversations and it made me feel like, wow, this is so exciting.
00:39:45
Speaker
And I think, and I still enjoy it. I enjoy meeting people and having, you know, talking to them about their work and their interests and what they want to do and, you know, things they've learned. So I think, I think I'll carry that, you know, away from my dad. But as women, these are not things that, you know, we're kind of encouraged to do. We are not even encouraged to talk to other men, you know, for that matter. And women do have to make that extra effort, you know.
00:40:15
Speaker
you know and I do think that but if you're going to have a career and if you're going to be you know building a business you do need some amount of this done uh pre-hand like this should be part of the curriculum this should be part of doing offers to say to be able to build relationships with people you know before you need them before you have a use case before you know there's a fire you know popular people for for the sake of
00:40:42
Speaker
Networking is something which I personally also I think don't consider myself to be very good at. I'm somewhat of an introvert.
00:40:52
Speaker
And so can you give me advice? How do I convert a one-off meeting into some sort of a long-term relationship? So say, for example, today we are meeting for the first time and we had a chat for about an hour. But what next? I mean, how does this get converted into an asset for me as a long-term relationship?
00:41:19
Speaker
So I think first of all, you just sort of bring the framework of like, this should work for me, you know, you don't know which one is going to work for you, right? But you know, you will generally enjoy and there are some you want, right? You could also find your tribe, right? You could find a tribal coach you care about or you wouldn't mind spending time with or people you wouldn't mind working with or people you wouldn't mind on your cap table, right? So, you know, so the way I look at it is that
00:41:48
Speaker
It really depends on who you are and what you enjoy. I really prefer one-on-one conversations to large gatherings, so I'm happy to make time on my calendar and spend a real hour as opposed to exchanging cards. I think I would never do that.
00:42:08
Speaker
It's also following up on conversations, right? With some people you have lots to chat with and then some people you can't even find like, you know, five lines of conversation. So I think there are clear sort of lines there on what's a good fitment for you. Think of it in that manner. And honestly, there's no playbook and I wouldn't sort of advise a playbook to network. I would really advise you to sort of loosen up and enjoy this a little bit. Basically talk to people you enjoy a lot more.
00:42:38
Speaker
And then find more of those people. Okay. So we've had a conversation and then maybe I would send you like a post-production version of it. But you know, I would hesitate to really chat with you once the whole podcast is released. And I mean, I would think that, you know, why would you want to, for example, chat with me and what is, you know, that hesitation kind of creeps in. And how do you overcome that? Look, you don't always have a conversation. You can keep in touch. You can say this is going on.
00:43:06
Speaker
You can sort of participate. You can let other people know, at least people you find interesting know about what you're working on. Like I do this all the time, you know, small, small things that we're working on. I'll send it to some of the friends I have.
00:43:21
Speaker
I think women enjoy whether it's a product beta release or whether it is an acquisition we made or something. So I think it has to be contextual. And I'm sure there are common threads, shared interests.
00:43:37
Speaker
A lot of people these days I talk to, we are having product conversations, you know, very simple things, but you know, just just little notes, right? And so I think just finding that common ground and things you are common. It's really not about what the person can do for you. I think that's, you know, that's really very small part of it.
00:43:59
Speaker
So what is the direction you want to take Sheroes towards now?
Vision for Sheroes' Future
00:44:04
Speaker
What have you thought as the next step in the Sheroes journey? So I think of Sheroes as a post-tag women's internet company. I see Sheroes as a large network.
00:44:20
Speaker
maybe the goal I always say is 100 million women on this network. And what I see is that we'll definitely do more work in things that are more enabling for the men. More work around workforce, more work around microentrepreneurship, more work around maybe even microfinance, something that we've been looking at closely. So yeah, I definitely want you to be a place
00:44:49
Speaker
on the internet that offers them what they are looking for. It's more money, it's identities, it's well-being, it's a peer group.
00:45:00
Speaker
You know, I, I dream of heroes, you know, as being that company. And, and of course, we want to stay, we have an internet company, we have a small little startup in there, you know, and they, they're just hacking their way into doing things, right? So, yeah, and what, what I would definitely want to see more of is more depth and range around things that we can offer to women, why are the heroes happy?
00:45:28
Speaker
And how big is the SEROS team right now, like your team? 40, 45 people. And how did you manage the transition to remote? I mean, was it remote previously also, or during the lockdown, did you make that transition?
00:45:44
Speaker
We have like, you know, we were the first ones in this country to talk about remote. Fleximos was the first one to talk about remote work, right? Before anybody said remote work, right? But obviously, the challenges at that point were very different. So the team at Sheroes has always been 32-50% remote on any given day.
00:46:05
Speaker
you know, a lot of our community in the 19th, they have always been 100% enough. And they're based in, you know, places we don't even know. And now we've gone 100% enough. I think it's only natural that we do it. We have an internet platform. If we can't do it, then we build it. And we run the workforce business. I think we should walk the talk. So
00:46:34
Speaker
Yeah, so the note is we were always set up on board, like, you know, our attendant for the slack, it's not done. We will have to do a biometric checker.
00:46:42
Speaker
And what are your learnings of making a remote organization work?
Managing a Remote Workforce
00:46:48
Speaker
Because most companies, while they may offer remote employment, but I think giving a fixed salary remote employment may not happen. They would generally be more comfortable as a freelancer. Maybe I hire a content writer, then I pay her per word. So then it may
00:47:06
Speaker
that you're paying only if the output is there but how do you build a company where you actually have people with regular employment but you never see them or you may barely see them like you know i think that's the whole thing the remote mode forces you to think about your business very deeply right what is the output you need to generate right and if that is very clear then you should be able to run an remote organization what does it matter whereas a person's a victim
00:47:34
Speaker
It's always baffled me. But I think if you want to run a seamless, dependable operation, you need a core team. You need a team that's available to you. It doesn't matter whether they come into an office or not. But are they delivering the work that needs to be delivered? Your tech team needs to be available. Your sales team needs to be on the job. It's pretty much like
00:47:56
Speaker
you know, what you would do in a regular office environment. Do you change the way you hire so that you're able to hire people who can work remotely? Right. So I think there are two parts to it. One is in operational roles, there is a certain amount of
00:48:15
Speaker
checks and balances required. So when we run the remote work business, we actually offer a certification first. You have to qualify it, and only 3,000 people out of 100,000 qualify. So remote work is hard. But strategic roles, product roles, sales roles, these are already strategic. You assume the person will have the self-drive and maturity to be able to do this.
00:48:41
Speaker
will be independent in their skills and their decision making and their process and their thoughts. I think clarity is what gets challenged when you work. Because you don't have the liberty to spend a lot of time together. You don't have the liberty to explain things face to face, which means organizational clarity is being challenged.
00:49:07
Speaker
Team clarity has been challenged. Team clarity of leadership has been challenged. And I think that's why people get uncomfortable with remote work because it's also a culture of questioning ownership, being able to drive things on your own. Remote work requires that. If you are a typical top-down command and control organization, remote is a very hard thing to ask. Then you have control issues.
00:49:32
Speaker
You must have made hiring mistakes where you hired someone and they kind of goofed off. And what was your learning from that? What is the way to hire someone who works well remotely? Right. So I think there are two parts to this. One is hiring mistakes in general. And I think those are the most sort of expensive mistakes to make. But I think we all make those mistakes. I've made tons of them.
00:49:59
Speaker
As far as I go, I think most of my mistakes have been on hiring people who look good in a general context, but not very, are not very apt to our context. So I think letting go of our own context was a little bit of, you know, things that I've done. But hiring for remote is really basically you have to up the meter on ownership level of skill and
00:50:26
Speaker
overall clarity that a person brings to the table. For somebody who can't document their thoughts clearly in a memo is not really set up for them. I think these are very, very simple checks and balances, but the idea of having to push your thinking into delivering output is a hard bomb. Some of the best organizations stay there doing that.
00:50:50
Speaker
Okay, cool. So before I end this podcast, one personal thanks I want to give to you. So my other business, one business is of course podcasting, which is fairly new, but my bread and butter comes from
00:51:05
Speaker
which is a recruitment firm and it was bootstrapped when I started off. I did not even have money for an office at that stage and my entire leadership team today has been hired through Seros.
00:51:22
Speaker
I just experimented, posted a job and found a really good person who was working remotely as a recruiter and she inspired me to just scale up that way. So today we employ about 60 women who all work remotely.
00:51:40
Speaker
And the entire leadership team came through zero, but unfortunately we can't post jobs anymore. So I got a lot of angry mails when we shut down the job work because why did you do that? And I'm like, you know, it's a call, you know, but I have to tell you, you know, I.
00:52:00
Speaker
a lot of people tell me this that their teams have come from heroes and lots of founders, lots and lots of founders when I go for some of these workshops and lots of women I'll show you know when I even at airport sometimes people will say hey I use the helpline and I think that number of
00:52:21
Speaker
people who sort of just found a lot of, you know, support like that is enormous, you know. And I think that's part to us. And now even today, I think a lot of this is happening on Shiro's in different contexts. A number of women who've written their books and set up their first office or taken online courses, who have got legal advice. So, you know,
00:52:46
Speaker
We just sort of broadened our metric. But yeah, I hear this and it's good to know. And that was the idea of sort of making internet work for women. I think the market is telling you that you should continue to run the jobs business also. With so many people coming and thanking you, I think that's a fairly good data point which you should not ignore.
00:53:14
Speaker
So you know what, I am happy to fund this business all over again. If an entrepreneurial person wants to run it, like I will incubate it, I will sort of seed it, you know, give you the resources. But Sheroes has grown a lot and now basically I'm building Sheroes like a portfolio. There are three businesses that are live, we're incubating another two.
00:53:36
Speaker
It's a company that's being built by entrepreneurs, right? So and I know more and more of my role as integrating salaries. So somebody, you know, wants to come and drive this, then we'll do it. Okay, cool. Cool. Thank you so much for giving me more time than what we had slotted. It was great talking to you. And I will get in touch with you soon. All right. Sounds good. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me here.
00:54:06
Speaker
Yeah, thank you for your time, Sairi. All the best. Thank you. Take care. Bye bye. So that was some great advice from Sairi on hustling, networking and building businesses. If you want to build an army of women to grow your business or brand, then look no further than Sheroes. Write to us at hello at thecodem.in for an introduction to Sairi.
00:54:44
Speaker
If you like the founder thesis podcast then do check out our other shows on subjects like marketing, technology, career advice, books and drama. Visit the podium.in that is t-h-e-p-o-d-i-u-m.in for a complete list of all our shows. This was an HD Smartcast Original.
00:55:12
Speaker
HDSmartCast.