My Journey From A Housewife To A Successful Entrepreneur | Harini Sivakumar

Who M I:

Hi, my name is Harini. And I am the founder of a personal care brand called Earth through them through them started, you know, accidentally, to be very honest, and the entire story of Earth to them today would definitely give you a lot of insights into how it came into existence and what we're trying to build in the environment today.

 

 

When And How I Start:

 

Back in 2009, I was 22 years old, and I was married quite early. And surprisingly, 23. One year down my married life, I had a son, and my son was born with this disability called Down syndrome. Down Syndrome is a genetic disorder that affects your physical, cognitive ability and, you know, various other, you know, issues that they might have the skin concerns as well, I know it is natural for a mother at that point of time to not take forward my corporate carrier, I did the same I quit my corporate carrier, just in 2010.

 

The minute it started, it ended. Fast forward, I think until about 2015, I was a very happy homemaker. 

 

I was moving from city to city, I moved a bunch of cities, trying to figure out answers solution for my skin or for my son's disability, which I would right now call it a special ability to be very honest, I think 2015 When I reached Delhi, my son was about five years old, and he had already started going to school. 

 

And that was the time around when you know, I had a lot of time in my hand and I wanted to you know, start, you know, start, I wanted to do something on my own. 

 

And I decided to start working on skin concerns of my son. And that's how I started building a small skincare line of my own, I created a small brand called soap works India. It was a small, homegrown Indian brand that I had created and registered under the MSME. 

 

And the idea back then was not to build a huge MNC or a company to be very honest, that was not a part of my you know, the dream or the vision. But I was very clear that I wanted to do something on my own. 

 

So I started creating a bunch of skincare products, or simple I would call it DIY skincare products right in my kitchen. You know, typically the idea was to sell it simply around the community I lived in. Back then I would call it a passion project that I had, I had a lot of time in my hand. And you know, the bug caught me a bit too seriously. 

 

And I decided to study formulations in detail. 2016 again came in, I decided to spend some time studying chemistry in detail. I come from a commerce background. 

 

So I had to unlearn my economics commerce accounts, relearn my organic chemistry in organic chemistry. I did a bunch of courses and I acute myself to understand how formulation works. 2017 I started selling through a lot of social media channels, you name it, Instagram, Facebook, Google, I was there everywhere trying to sell my products through social media channels.

 

I think this was the time around when I started building my own website. I was quite inquisitive. I wanted to build my brand all by myself, right from the website to packaging to graphic designing, I literally put my hands into everything. And I tried doing everything myself. 

 

It was around this time, you know, 2018 when my dad was casually visiting Google, by the by I had moved to Oregon from Delhi. And my dad was visiting Google. And he literally saw me inside this room, sitting amongst a bunch of boxes trying to create something and my son outside the screaming and you know, wanting for attention. 

 

My dad came in, you know, very angry and he was like, Honey, what are you trying to do? I mean, you should draw a line between your passion and your business. And you should start focusing on your family. 

 

That really hurt me too hard to be very honest. I decided why should I give up on my dreams when I know that there are a bunch of customers waiting there for my product? Why should I even give up on my dreams? And hence, I decided to take yourself I requested him to help me build my brand and not stop me. 

 

A wonderful dad he was he decided to jump into the business together. We started in 2019. We rebranded soap works as a through them and we launched it into the market in 2019. When I came into the market, to be very honest, first generation entrepreneur, no experience, literally in terms of what a business even means. 

 

Straight up seven years of being a homemaker, no corporate carrier, and suddenly deciding to start a brand on my own. Literally it was overwhelming at that point of time. But I think what really kept us going was the dream, the passion and the vision. that we had in what we wanted to do in 2019. 

 

And I decided to own the manufacturing, it was a very, very complicated decision to take a call of owning the manufacturing simply because, you know, for us when we came into the market, we were very, very small, you know, amongst the giants that existed out there in the market, it was just me and my dad and we wanted one more person to help us you know, and running the business and we had just taken off and literally, they were no funds in our hand technically operational issues that we had in the company literally existing right in a you know, in a home in a home grown setup. 

 

I mean, where would I go find that person? And while I was contemplating and thinking, how am I even going to take off this business? I decided to take a plunge and go to the you know, the security guard of the condo where I live in and I told them by MJ cleric, he can kill the guy. The security was like kiss bought Kalitta Jaco, I said could calm hugger pay updates DG. 

 

So the next day I had a you know a line of girls standing outside my door asking Didi Kia CAMI Jadu Porsche but then Kia Karna kagermann, so I said, You come Kootenay Karna. Do you know? Are you do you know how to read and write? Are you educated out of all those girls out there I spotted one girl. Her name was moumita. And she had come from this village called Sundarbans a tiny little village back in West Bengal. She was very young, she was about 20 to 23 When I saw her in 2019. 

 

So I asked her mamita Do you know how to read and write, she said, Ed, I'm a graduate, I was shocked. She was a graduate, and yet she was looking for a, you know, a house help stop and asked her what pushed her to look for such a role. She said, I don't know how to speak English, but I can read it. But I can read and write English. 

 

And that very moment, I decided that she's the one I'm going to recruit. She was the first employee and the proudest person that I am off in this entire journey that I've built in Earth with them. We took her at a salary of 5000 rupees back in 2019. Today, she gets a salary of 10x times of what she was at, you know, in 2019. And the amount of you know, confidence or the evolution that I have seen in more meters entire journey at Earth through them is something that I must mention it here today, when she came in, you know, there are two aspects to this. 

 

One is the physical aspect. And the second thing is her intellectual aspect, right? The physical aspect she came in, as a person clad in a Saturday covering her head, there's no nothing wrong about it. But she came as this nice little girl, you know, raw from village and that's how she came into Earth through them. And from there on, I could train her into a person who actually came to me after a month and told me the the uncle strategy on a Cheese Company, can you do cod orders only on Friday, can we do prepaid orders only on Tuesdays, she built strategies in the company. And this was an awakening moment for me. 

 

And I that was my very first success in building Earth with Him that very moment that day, I felt that I had already tasted success, you know, in building a through them. From then on, we recruited many such women like mamita, who work in the production floor in the factory site today at Earth through them who lead the production floor completely. Apart from that we also work it's natural that because you know, my son had a special ability, I wanted to ensure that we were completely inclusive, we wanted to ensure that we were bringing people with disability to work alongside us. 

 

We had a lot of you know, people on the spectrum, people who had Down syndrome, working alongside us in the factory site and several roles. And this was consciously done with an idea to ensure that we were being completely inclusive. In terms of the work environment that we had, while I was still surviving as a homegrown entrepreneur, I had a lot of girls about five or eight girls coming right to my house to help me you know, build this brand. And it used to be literally literally challenging at that point of time. 

 

Because constantly there were people around me wondering why did I have these many girls right inside my house. And I think that was the stepping stone for me to decide to get out of this home, you know, home based setup into moving into an office space. Technically, it was a great deal for a mom like me, considering the fact that I've never stepped out of the house with the big worry in my head wondering what my son is going to do. Who's going to take care of him? How am I going to step out? It was literally moving out of my comfort zone. 

 

And it was a phase where I had to decide between my my dream my career versus my son. And I had to do both of it. I had no option and that's where I think we women, you know, take such challenging decisions and come out in flying colors. Fast forward. The brand was built from 2019 From a small homegrown set up to a company that has about 100 plus employees today. We've built it very, very carefully slowly in this number of years. 

 

Keeping in mind the number of products that we have. We have about 160 products that are selling on the website and these ones 60 Prod did not happen just like that on day number one, we've taken so much number of hours and time into, you know, putting our mind into understanding what consumers wanted and how they wanted it right. For example, while I survived as a home grown entrepreneur, I realized that a lot of consumers were coming to small businesses like mine. 

 

Back then, when I was a, you know, small homegrown setup as soap works for two major reasons. One, because they wanted customization consumers were not able to figure out how do they reach out to large brands and give them their customization requests. That was one major reason why consumers were coming to smaller brands. The second thing was, a portion of these consumers were wanting to have a very sustainable lifestyle, they're very conscious consumers, and hence, they felt it was easier to approach smaller brands and give them request about the sustainability, you know, lifestyle. 

 

Keeping these two in mind, we decided to come into the market with the thought process of building a zero waste skincare line 2020 pandemic hit, I think it really wasn't really mattering too much in the personal care space, consumers were becoming more and more conscious about their personal care routines. In terms of you know, the b2c market mix that we chose how we wanted to scale the brand, we want it to be a completely digital brand. 

 

Why? To be very honest, for any home, you know, for any Indian brand. I think being a digital brand is definitely something which is very easy, because the entry barriers are not so complicated and one can easily penetrate into online markets. Most of our target audience were consumers who are you know, engrossing. A lot of content from you know, social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and these are, you know, low hanging fruits, which we felt that you know, could be easily targeted, you know, when we wanted to enter enter the market. 

 

So that was the strategy that we took, we wanted to ensure that we were 100 person digital brand, we built our own b2c website, we started selling through other third party platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, mica, and few other channels from doing 100 orders a month to 25,000 orders a month right now. We've done it all just being digital. And if I could do this at the age of 35, building a 200 Crore company with no prior experience, I think what are you even waiting for, you still have a long way to go in your journey, you might be a mother, you might be a woman who's just married, you might be a woman who's pregnant, you might be someone who's just taken a break in your career. Don't stop. 

 

This is just the beginning of something really big in your career, I was never a bright child growing up, neither in my school nor in the college. But I always assumed that I was very street smart. Even today, while I you know, sit in many of these investor conversations, one constant requirement that I have is whether I'm from an IIT or an I Am. 

 

While this could have been a super duper added advantage for me. But that is not going to be the deciding factor for me to where I'm heading to, and whether you know how big I can build my company to at this point, if I were going in, I could build a brand with 50,000 clothes at the age of 50. And if I could build a brand at the age of 35.