How to Build a Successful Business | Entrepreneurial Mindset & Innovation

Girisha (Host)

Welcome to another episode of the Gxpress podcast. I'm Girisha. Today we are delighted to have with us Dr. Shweta Choudhary, Founder and Founding Director of InnovHer. Over to you, ma'am.

Shweta

Thank you, Girisha, and thank you Gxpress for this opportunity. It is always wonderful to talk to people — especially on platforms where you meet those who really want to know where the future lies. Thank you for inviting me.

Girisha (Host)

Could you give us a brief introduction to what you actually do at InnovHer?

Shweta

Gxpress is actually the right organisation to understand this, because we have been doing this together for a long time, and I am glad the organisation and the management at Gxpress — especially Praveen — have been great supporters. You must have heard of people who make people. We are not godfathers and godmothers. We make businesses. We are godfathers to businesses. That is what we do.

Girisha (Host)

A lot of people want to run their own business, but very few actually succeed. What would you call an entrepreneurial mindset?

Shweta

Two things, Girisha — and for the time our country is in, both matter. One: you want to do something, and you know what to do. But you have to keep doing it, and you have to do it logically. You have to separate your likes and dislikes from the business decision. It is not always true that what I like will make a business. A business happens on what your user and your client like, and on what goes into the revenue and the expense. At the end of the day, what does not earn is not a business. The logic of what people will like, and how it will make money, is the real business.

Shweta

The second part of the mindset is the zeal to keep digging into those two questions. That is what makes an entrepreneur.

Girisha (Host)

How much weight would you give to mentorship, networking and the ecosystem?

Shweta

Very important. But more important than any of them is your judgment — where it is going right for you, and where it is going wrong. Mentorship is like the cricket score in India: once the match is on, it is available all around you. When you need it, you find it everywhere. Where to take it, and where not to, is your opinion. The same is true of investments, of networking, and of meeting people. The right ratio and the right time is your decision. They are required. An overdose of everything is bad.

Girisha (Host)

And if you do not know where to filter, you do not know what to keep.

Shweta

Yes. If you do not know where to filter, the advice hits you at the right points and the wrong ones. They matter — but what matters more is how you use them for your benefit.

Girisha (Host)

People come to you with different ideas. Where do they go right, and where do they go wrong, when they try to turn a dream into a reality?

Shweta

They get emotional about it. You need the passion. You do not need the emotion. There is a difference between sympathy and empathy, and there is the same difference between being emotional about something and being logical and passionate about it. Passion is needed. You still have to understand what will make it a business.

Shweta

There was a time when all we needed was a way to move material from one place to another — a truck, a tractor, a carrier. Then we realised that if this keeps happening for many people, someone can make a business out of it. India has a strong network of people who make freight available. But in the last five to ten years I would ask the Gxpress team itself: is that the only thing people need, or have they started asking for more?

Shweta

Today logistics and supply chain, as a business and as something society needs, has many dimensions. People want GPS. They want to know where the material is. They want clarity on payments, tolls and what is being carried. They want it weatherproof. They even want the carbon saved — they do not want to send something that burns extra fuel. It is no longer “move the goods from here to there.” There can be a thousand ways to deliver them. As society evolves, what it expects from freight changes.

Shweta

So: can you see what the need will be in five years? Can you build the infrastructure for it, prepare for it, and then keep doing it? That is where the change actually happens. Using every resource you have, in that whole game, in the best possible way — that is what makes a big business.

Shweta

Choosing a professional company for a service does not only make them a vendor. It makes them a consultant.

Girisha (Host)

True — not only the consultancy itself.

Shweta

It is simple. If you want to cook for twenty people at home and you have five hours, you will do it best yourself, for a thousand reasons. If you want to feed twenty people in twenty minutes, you need more hands — or a restaurant, and someone to supply it. Building a business is similar. A generation used to make one business in one generation: ten people at home, big in twenty or thirty years. That was fine. Today, if I want to build something in five years, and it has to reach five or ten digits, I will need hands. Call them advisors, consultants, partners or mentors. That is your choice.

Girisha (Host)

Industry experts, I would say.

Shweta

Yes.

Girisha (Host)

InnovHer focuses strongly on innovation. How would you elaborate on that?

Shweta

We are standing in a time when the world has understood why innovation matters. We are a generation that saw COVID. We have seen the shift from the internet to AI. We have also seen society shift — from the joint family to the nuclear family, and back toward people living together. When that many shifts happen, innovation is what matches the pace. We cannot keep doing what we were doing years ago. We are not doing it. The debate about whether we need innovation is over.

Shweta

The question now is how to use it well: to make businesses out of it, better lifestyles, better generations, a better planet. That is what we do. We code the innovation so it becomes impactful.

Girisha (Host)

What I loved in that answer is the contrast. There was a generation that worked a lifetime to make a business successful. Today people are making it big in five years, and for that you need professionals.

Shweta

There are people, brains and hands to do it. Nobody has so much time that they will take a generation to make it successful. You cannot. It is not possible.

Girisha (Host)

Last question. What advice would you give an aspiring entrepreneur, or an aspiring founder?

Shweta

It is a golden moment, and a golden era. Everyone is ready to accept the shift. Everyone is ready to accept the growth. Everyone is ready to accept that the country, and the globe, is moving toward something better. How much of that better can you be? How much of it can become yours? Just make it. It is going to happen. The pie is already there. Make a part of it for yourself.

Girisha (Host)

That is a beautiful way of putting it. Anything you would like to add — an experience you would like to share?

Shweta

Something I have shared with Praveen at Gxpress. As a founder, even with the experience of supporting so many other founders, there are days when you wonder whether you can take it, and whether you should. There is one person, Praveen, who will stand beside you and say it will happen. Dream bigger, and leave the smaller problems. The vision of something five or ten years out is what keeps you going. That is what I have learned from him. I think we should spend more time with him.

Girisha (Host)

Wonderful. Thank you so much for your time, ma'am.

Shweta

Thank you.