76: Building a clean label brand - the highs and lows of being a female entrepreneur: Anusha Bhushan, CEO and Co-Founder, Smoodies

The Elephant in the Room

“And it is really hard, I think, especially when imposter syndrome sort of plays on your mind saying, do I deserve to be so audacious with my dreams. And actually, for some time, I think I used to say the right thing, so I used to say that I'm playing a go big strategy, but when it came to actually making decisions, I would take a slightly safer route. And in fact an investor actually called me out on it and he said, you know, you're saying you want to go big, but your dreams do seem to be limited by some sense of restraint in your own mind.”

Across the world women’s participation in labour fell dramatically during the pandemic and India was no different. Except that numbers of women in the workforce had been steadily declining since 2010.

Women entrepreneurs fair no better in the country - just 14% of women own or run businesses(IMF2019). So, it is no great surprise that women account for just 17% of GDP in India, less than half the global average.

The barriers to entry for women are numerous - socio-cultural expectations, risk aversion, unequal access to finance and collateral, absence of support networks …. The list is endless. So, it is always good to meet with women who step out of their comfort zone to make their dreams come alive. In this case, it is my guest Anusha Bhushan, a young entrepreneur who left her career in investment banking to set up a wellness beverage brand Smoodies.

In this episode of The Elephant in the Room podcast we talk about her journey to becoming an entrepreneur,

👉🏾 Overthinking and overcoming the Imposter syndrome

👉🏾 Her commitment to building a clean labeled, sustainable business

👉🏾 The unique challenges faced by female entrepreneurs

👉🏾 The highs and lows of running a business

👉🏾 Support networks and mentors

👉🏾 Learnings from running a sustainable wellness brand

👉🏾 Her advice to aspiring female entrepreneurs

To know more listen here 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾

Memorable Passages from the podcast

👉🏾 Morning, Sudha. Thank you so much, a pleasure to be here.

👉🏾Sure. I actually find this question very hard to answer, still discovering it. But no to answer it accurately by trade I'm a food and beverages entrepreneur based out of India. I run a fruit-based beverages brand called Smoodies, so I've been running this for the last six years. Before, which I spent some time in management consulting and in investment banking across both Mumbai and London.

👉🏾 I did my MBA from, IIM Calcutta, and I have an economics degree from the London School of Economics. Both degrees were quite some time ago. And personally, I'm a pet parent, have been for around two years now and it's a fairly big part of my life. I'm very passionate about sort of clean label nutrition and that feeds into what I do at work. I'm beginning to learn a lot more about climate change as well, and I like to spend time, educating myself around sort of what we can do as a business as well, and of course how that feeds into my personal life as well.

👉🏾 So my first job coming out of LSE was in investment banking that was in London. So, you know, I did the mandatory, the analyst years in an investment bank and a couple of years down the line, I think I just realised that there were two things that were missing for me. One, I didn't really want to do banking long term, and I wanted a career in India, that was important to me for a number of different reasons. I think family, of course, was something that I always knew I wanted to make it back to India for eventually. But you know the murmurings of entrepreneurship in India had started around then this is, maybe around 2011 or so. And the idea of sort of eventually starting a business in India at some point was sort of seeded in my mind.

👉🏾 So, I moved back, I said, let me move back and there are a lot of different things that I could do. I was figuring out business school and so I took a break, and I moved back with a couple of food intolerances and so I found myself during my break, actually walking up and down a lot of supermarket shelves in Bangalore, you know, just looking for things to sort of manage lactose intolerance and stuff like that.

👉🏾 And you know, this is, again, this is back in the day when there was no variety available on shelves. And that's what kind of got me thinking that, you know, I've been thinking about doing something on my own anyway. Maybe there's an opportunity here to build something in the packaged food space. I'm not a techie and so the startup stuff for me was very much like I wanna do a product that I understand that I can make and sell and build a business, build a physical business, right?

👉🏾 But you know, somewhere in that process, I got into business school, so I went. Somewhere in those two years of business school, I got a consulting role. So I said, why don't I do that for a bit? So I did, but I think the second time round, I think the parallels between investment banking and management consulting they're both very glamorous roles to take. But I think because I had already done the banking thing, when I did it in consulting, it didn't give me any sense of fulfilment. And that's when I realised, I think I was ready to maybe sort of take that plunge and just figure out atleast the early part of starting my own business. I was a bit early actually, I was maybe 27 when I made that decision. But I was very, very particular that I wanted to start the grind of entrepreneurship while I was relatively young. Because I just wanted to be able to devote all my energy and all my time to it, which typically I think as you get older, you just have priorities as well. And I said, let me do it while I'm free and unhindered. So that's how it started. And yeah, so I just quit my job one day much to everybody’s dismay and yeah, and then just started.

👉🏾 I suffer from imposter syndrome all the time. To the extent that I think, sometimes if somebody gives me a compliment or pays me a kind word about our business, in the back of my mind, I am literally finding all the reasons for why they are wrong and I don't deserve that compliment. There have been times when people have actually told me to stop, just accept the compliment, it's okay.

👉🏾 I'm actually working actively at combating risk aversion though. I think entrepreneurship is a gamble and sometimes I think the journey only sort of pays off if you play the kind of go big or go home strategy. And it is really hard, I think, especially when imposter syndrome sort of plays on your mind saying, do I deserve to be so audacious with my dreams. And actually, for some time, I think I used to say the right thing, so I used to say that I'm playing a go big strategy, but when it came to actually making decisions, I would take a slightly safer route. And in fact an investor actually called me out on it and he said, you know, you're saying you want to go big, but your dreams do seem to be limited by some sense of restraint in your own mind.

👉🏾 So that is something that I'm very conscious of and I'm working on that now. I think comes down from, I think, situations of absolute uncertainty, they used to make me feel very, very anxious. So actively trying to manage or learning how to manage ambiguity and just become comfortable with it because unfortunately with entrepreneurship, you find yourself in these situations all the time.

👉🏾 So yeah, I mean, we positioned Smoodies as a wellness beverage brand because effectively what we are trying to do is we are trying to unjunk the juices sector, right?

👉🏾 So we're trying to deliver a ‘better for you’ version of products in the packaged food space. And the first space that we actually decided to work in was the juices of the space. So for us what that means is you know, if you study the back label of any other large juice brand today, you'll find sugar, and preservatives, and emulsifiers, and additives and colours, flavours, you name it.

👉🏾 And so the actual fruit content that you're getting is very very low. And that's why we call it a wellness beverage brand, you know, we don't like to call ourselves a health brand because what we're trying to do is effectively say, can we give you juice in its most natural form, and that itself is a wellness play. So we call ourselves a wellness brand, we also like to talk about how we are clean label.

👉🏾 So clean label effectively means that, right? It means that every single ingredient on your back label should be something that a consumer understands and recognises. And ideally should not have been manufactured in a lab. That one is a extremely cool principle for our business. I mean, we wouldn't exist if we didn't want to solve that one problem.

👉🏾 The other bit that we are very, very sort of conscious of, and this is a very difficult one, it's very difficult goal to meet is, can we be a sustainable business as well? And by sustainable for us, again, being in the packaged foods industry, the first thing that we're trying to attack is the packaging. So most of our competitors today are in plastic. You know, they're using plastic in their bottles, in their labels, in their secondary packaging. So the first thing we said is like, can we do glass instead? And we've had to make a lot of other compromises around the business to make the glass bottles work. But it's something again, it's just incredibly important for us because if small businesses today, while building the foundations of their business, don't try to make it sustainable, there's no way you can do it at large scale. Is it possible to take a 500 crore brand and say, okay, why don't you now try to become sustainable? Your processes are set in place, your supply chains are set in place and it is what it is. So I think that's the beauty of the startup ecosystem as well, you see a lot of entrepreneurs these days trying to do the right thing. So that's, fairly important for us.

👉🏾 Unfortunately I think women entrepreneurs not only face the usual entrepreneurial challenges but they face the additional set of challenges that come from society, come from people close to them.

👉🏾 And I think when I talk about women entrepreneurs, I am talking about myself as well. I think that the largest sort of issue is that society is still not used to seeing women in positions of authority in the workplace. Especially somebody saying, I run this business, It's almost like it's a contrarian thing to say and to hear and to understand and to digest.

👉🏾 So for me like this comes across and has come across in multiple ways. I have a male co-founder, he's a very good friend of mine and is very supportive of this fact right? That I have a female co-founder who is the CEO of this business and I must ensure that she is given that position in every meeting that we walk into, right?

👉🏾 But not everybody gets that privilege of having somebody who understands that. So, you know, when we raise capital from investors or when we are trying to attract high-quality talent, or even just sitting in a meeting with key customers or vendors, there's an extra layer of mental load that every female entrepreneur actually has to take on, just to ensure that they are establishing their position of authority in the room.

👉🏾 Because by default eyeballs will move to the man in the room.

👉🏾 It is what it is and the only way to do it is to actually, in the meeting hold your own, right? Or establish it right up front that I'm the person that you should be directing most of the conversation to, for example.

👉🏾 So I think it's a very frustrating place to be and you know in the beginning it used to bother me. It no longer bothers me, I've just picked up a set of skills to be able to manage that. And also as I said a very strong understanding with my co-founder that this is how we do things, but if you don't have that support, then it's really hard to do.

👉🏾 The other thing is there's also a lot of mental load and guilt, sometimes of making sure you show up as, in your society dictated role, right? Like, I know my personal life is really simple. I don't have kids and I have a super supportive husband. But you know, I know a lot of female entrepreneurs, otherwise who have guilt of, am I spending enough time as a mother or a wife or a daughter, and expectations, preset expectations that people have of you. So, yeah, I think men are always encouraged to shoot for the stars and chase their dreams, but women are always cautioned, right.

👉🏾 Saying will you be able to do it all. And if they're not cautioned there, that's always subtle guilt that you're made to feel. That because you spend so much time at work, you're spending less time on something else.

👉🏾 So I think for me being a consumer business the highs are almost always related to just great consumer feedback. Whether it is somebody just telling me that, you know. I love your product or seeing the brand that we've build, like actually being entrenched into the lives of our consumers. I love seeing that especially when it is actually unprompted feedback, right? I went for a jog the other day in the middle of Cubbon Park , it's just like very large park in the middle of Bangalore and I saw somebody doing yoga and they had a bottle of ours.

👉🏾 And it's a very nice feeling to see that, you know people are using what you've built in their everyday life. I think that for me has always given me some of my greatest highs and that's what we build for. And that's what makes me wake up every morning. The other thing is, I love doing what I do. I love working with my team. The other sort of the dual objective of entrepreneurship was can we generate employment? And there was the other reason to run a product business. We run our own manufacturing, means we hire labour. You know, the first person in our factory who was making the product, and the only person making the product at that time is now the production supervisor for 20 people.

👉🏾 So I like being able to see that we've also been able to give career progression and financial progression to people. So I think the people aspect of it also keeps me fulfilled.

👉🏾 There is a network of women entrepreneurs that has been set up by the Pan IIM member network. We started picking up momentum around 2020, so when the pandemic struck. I find that network to be very useful to sort of bounce ideas off, and so I do like networks because of the ability to access resources and to find the right set of people who can maybe help you.

👉🏾 But I was slightly contrarian due to how useful networks are after a certain point, right? Because in our culture, like we're always curating self-image and we're always showcasing only the positive aspects of your journey. And I've seen that, that extends to networks as well, especially like the larger the network the more people have to lose by talking about their difficulties, right? Because you don't know who else is in their network. So I use the networks to some extent to meet people or to meet the relevant people. But I much prefer one-to-one interactions, I think they feel a lot more authentic, and I feel a lot safer communicating in smaller settings. But there is still even outside of just this one IIM network, there's still work to be done to build an ecosystem, to support women.

👉🏾 A lot of people are doing a bit, right? So you have people who are funding women entrepreneurs, or who are trying to ensure that there is diversity in their founder networks. But I think in general, I still feel like the onus is on, and it should be actually, the onus is still on women entrepreneurs too, to seek out help. But if you do, and if you go out and you look for help and you do it systematically, you build your networks, there is a lot of goodwill and there is a lot of help out there as long as you're willing to put in the time and the energy. And this is actually independent of whether you are a man or a woman.

👉🏾 If you build the right networks that are relevant to your industry and your goals, there are a lot of people willing to help. Like I have different people I talk to for advice on sort of various steers of life right? So if I'm worried about capital raising, I know that there are three or four people who've done it and done it very successfully, and I would go to them and will talk to them about what they did how they did it, what am I not doing right, for example. If I'm struggling with something very specifically to do with our industry. I go with problem statements about the challenges in our business to, let's say, an industry professional. These are people who you don't get time with very often. But very often, like they come back with perspectives and solutions that you may not have gotten if you had sat with a problem yourself. And then there's just the people who you talk to just to complain about life, right?

👉🏾 You know, you don't want anything back, but you just need somebody to be like 100% vulnerable with. And I've actually found that the best people for that are not your friends, not your family, somebody who is going through what you're going through and has just recognised that I'm safe with this person. I have people in the F&B industry who I will call up and talk about anything and everything that's going on, knowing that it's a confidential conversation. And I think that one is what I've learned in the pandemic in fact, to find a few people who you can talk to, so more than network, it's just about feeling safe.

👉🏾 Definitely

👉🏾 So outside of obviously business decisions there are obviously some business decisions I would've done differently with the benefit of hindsight. But on a larger scale, the one thing I...