Rotarians partake in an engaging entrepreneurial and political debate
Falguni Nayar
Falguni Nayar is an eminent investment banker with experience in financial services and e-marketing. She is the creator of a premier online retail brand for beauty and wellness, Nykaa. Nayar also serves on the board of a number of blue chip companies and has been the recipient of numerous awards and honours.She thanked President Rtn. Shailesh for giving her an opportunity to talk before such a great audience and expressed her hope of living up to the expectations they had from her. She started by introducing her subject of discussion as an entrepreneurial story. “I will be talking about what the first 100 days of Modi Sarkar have meant to an entrepreneur like me and my company, Nykaa. At first, I wasn’t so excited when he was nominated as the Prime-Ministerial candidate because I am too secular a person to be excited about such a development. However, as I saw him through the elections and after he had won, I was very impressed with the man and his vision for our country. India is now being recognised as one of the world’s best growth markets and he has helped us achieve this in a short span of 100 days,” she said.
Nayar went on to explain how Modi made this happen. She said, “He has done this through three main areas of improvement. India has a very complex regulatory framework; there is a lot of red tape and the macro-economic environment has not been favourable. Modi gained people’s trust by convincing them that he will make the economic framework more accessible and transparent by giving us a regulatory roadmap and paving the way for a stable economy. The second big achievement as I see it is that he has stressed the removal of red tape and petty corruption that hinders the economic growth of a country and that’s a big positive for an upcoming entrepreneur like me. Moving on to the third area, the macro-economic environment,
I would like to credit RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan, who has promised to manage the currency rates better.”Nayar also shared her ideas on new ways of doing business and how it is being empowered by the economic developments in India today. She said, “The business sentiment in the country improved almost immediately after Modi won the elections. He made his presence felt on the stock market and acknowledged the importance of gaining capital investment for the country. Not only are big businesses such as TATA motors and ACC getting a clear win thanks to this approach, small enterprises like mine are also getting the opportunity to avail of foreign capital. The kind of money that is flowing into the e-commerce sector with portals such as Flipkart and Snapdeal making million dollar deals is undreamt of. The kind of money that is backing fresh entrepreneurial talent is also commendable.”
Nykaa is Nayar’s brainchild and she shared its inception story with Rotarians. “I left a long career in investment banking to start Nykaa. I believe that both beauty and e-commerce are going to grow tremendously in the future and I realised the need to start early in an industry that is on the cusp of growth rather than venturing in one that is already crowded by successful businesses. So I chose the e-commerce space, which is realtively small now, but global trends have indicated that beauty, as a business, will grow and so will e-commerce as a medium of transaction. E-commerce has to be about three key aspects – you give people access to products that are not easily available offline, offer a whole range of products to the consumer and provide them the convenience of shopping from home. I wanted to embrace this technology and we started small, with 300 brands and 10,000 products. Nykaa is the third generation of e-commerce companies in India. We took off on our journey in 2012 and have since come a long way,” she said.
Regulatory governance is not as restrictive in the e-commerce sector as it is for physical businesses and that is one of the biggest bonuses of starting an e-commerce company. Nayar elaborated on how e-commerce is not just about selling something online but also entails heavy and innovative digital marketing.
She explains, “E-commerce is about one-on-one marketing in a cost-effective manner and statistics show that digital marketing today is far more efficient than its traditional counterparts. E-commerce initiatives have to be about consumer engagement and not just about selling. We offer virtual makeovers, have a helpline, a beauty book and several other features that make our customers feel special and significant to our business.”
Nayar does not believe in a formal education for learning business that needs practical experience as an entrepreneur. Nykaa has had a very rapid growth chart in the market and Nayar hopes to build brands at a low-cost budget that can grow through brick-and-mortar stores as well.