In 2011 Richa Kar quit her job at SAP and set out to sell lingerie online in India.
Then she went looking for office space in Bengaluru.
She would explain the business, and the conversation would end. Landlord after landlord. Nobody wanted to rent a room to an online lingerie company.
Most people would read that as the market telling them something. She read it as the market telling her something else.
If renting a room for this business was that uncomfortable, what must it be like for a woman walking into a shop, in front of a male shopkeeper, to buy something she did not want to discuss?
The awkwardness she kept running into was the exact problem she was building for.
Zivame launched on 25 August 2011. Reliance Retail bought it in 2020.
Here is what that means for you today:
Discomfort in your category is usually a market, not a warning.
We tend to avoid the categories people find awkward. Anything to do with the body. Money troubles. Debt. Fertility. Periods. Funerals.
And yet those are exactly the things people need help with and cannot easily ask for. The embarrassment that keeps sellers away is the same embarrassment that keeps customers underserved.
So when you notice people going quiet about something, or handling it badly, or doing it somewhere they clearly feel uneasy – look harder. The quiet is where the need is.
#WomenInBusiness #SmallBusinessIndia #WomenEntrepreneurs #ProductIdeas #LudhianaBusiness #PunjabBusiness #SakhiSangini #HerBuildingHer
