Building Value-add Brands: Leadership perspectives

NSRCEL, the startup hub at Indian Institute of Management Bangalore,celebrates 20 years of entrepreneurship. The Dialogue by NSRCEL was organized in Gurugram on Saturday the 22nd of February. The theme for this gathering is ‘Building Value-add Brands: Leadership perspectives from the She-Suite’.

Dr. Anita Gupta opened the session is the head of NSTEDB and our sponsor from DST. She shared the opportunities and facilities women entrepreneurs make use of in the startup ecosystem. She has been instrumental in supporting many programs at NSRCEL for over a decade.

This was followed by a talk by Kainaz Messman Harchandrai – Co-owner and founder of Theobroma Patisserie India: Kainaz is currently Creative Director at Theobroma, a much-loved patisserie with over 50 outlets across Mumbai, Puneand Delhi NCR. Kainaz is alumna of The Institute of Hotel Management (IHM), Mumbai and the Oberoi Centre of Learning & Development (OCLD), Delhi. While she said “starting and growing is not easy” the 50 outlets of Theobroma “had a small part to play in the transformation and shift of the culinary landscape”. She also said that the “core of Theobroma has been product” even in a time when people didn’t understand what a brownie is or why she was using “vegetables in dessert” by creating a carrot cake.

Her lessons to other entrepreneurs included; “Business is a team sport, you cannot be everything to your business” and the importance of “taking responsibility, things will always go wrong”.Malika Sadani – Founder and CEO, The Moms Co who is a passionate entrepreneur and a mother of two young daughters and the Founder and CEO of The Moms Co., India’s leading company for toxin-free products catering to expectant and new mothers seeking natural, chemical-free products for their daily personal care regimen. Her key learnings for budding entrepreneurs was to “be resilient, through all the ups and downs of starting up” and “how entrepreneurs should not be afraid to seek help” but always “be authentic”.

The next speaker Meghana Narayan, Co-Founder, Slurrp Farm holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA in Computation as a Rhodes Scholar from Oxford University. It is her personal goal to up the nutrition table for Indian kids. Slurrp Farm strongly believes that no parent should compromise on health or taste when it comes to feeding their child. And that is the Slurrp Farm promise – made by two mothers, just the way you would at home. hared the deliberate move to cater to children in the age group of 6 to 23 months to encourage children to “eat healthier, without the compromising on quality.”

The final speaker of the day was Vandana Suri the Founder, Taxshe an organisation with the core focus of women and child safety, with a very practical solution of women driving women and kids. Taxshe mobilises underprivileged women, trains them in professional driving skills, and these women, in turn, drive women and children to and from the workplace and school. Taxshe is currently present in Bangalore and Delhi NCR, driving about 600+ kids to school every single day. Vandana has recently been awarded by the World Bank under the SDG’s and Her Contest 2019, from among 1200 applicants across the globe. Taxshe was also part of the Social Startup Program at NSRCEL shared how building a value-add brand also involves having a good team and how incubators like NSRCEL act as a catalyst to the growth story of a Social startup.