Lessons from building a business ground up

Entrepreneurship is often described as an act of courage. In reality, it feels more like a leap of faith. Starting a business requires the kind of commitment one associates with life’s biggest decisions — similar to getting married or raising a child. Once you decide to begin, you are all in.

For me, the first challenge was not scaling or branding. It was simply deciding to take that leap.

Capital is the oxygen of a business

For many women founders, access to capital is challenging. Often women do not have independent assets or financial backing, which makes investing capital in business even more intimidating. Reaching out to investors and VC funds who bet on the business does help in ensuring personal safeguard.

The biggest challenge in the early stage of building any business is Capital. Without it, a company struggles to breathe. Capital is like oxygen to any business — without sufficient supply, growth slows and operations suffer.

When I started Earthling in 2023, there was no proof of concept, no operating history and no running P&L. I invested my personal savings and borrowed money from family to get started. That allowed us to launch operations, but it soon became clear that this capital alone would not sustain the business. Since we were a first-year company, banks were not ready to extend loans either.

At that point, it became imperative to bring in an equity investor to fund operations and allow the company to grow.

Another approach that helped me was mentally separating financial security from risk capital. Protect your safety net, but create a pool of capital you are willing to deploy in the business.

Building credibility in a traditional business ecosystem

Distribution businesses in India are largely legacy-driven. Many of these are small, family-run enterprises that operate in traditional ways. In such environments, a woman-led business can initially be perceived as a part-time venture rather than a serious enterprise.

Credibility in such ecosystems cannot be demanded. It has to be earned.

When we began, we worked closely with our distributors to ensure their success. Our goal was not just to sell products but to create long-term value for partners — better margins, capital support and sustainable growth opportunities.

Those early successes became proof points. Over time, they turned into case studies that encouraged other distributors to work with us. Respect in business is rarely given upfront. It is built through consistent performance.

Handling moments of doubt

Entrepreneurship is filled with moments where you question your decisions. Whether it was raising venture capital or deciding to add a new product line, there were several moments when the path forward was not obvious.

In such situations, I rely on a simple exercise — pen and paper.

I write down the pros and cons of the decision and analyse its implications over a five-year horizon. When you evaluate choices with a long-term lens, clarity often emerges.

This approach has helped me make some of the most important decisions in the company.

Discipline before expansion

The modern startup ecosystem often celebrates rapid expansion and aggressive marketing spends. But sustainable businesses are built through thoughtful allocation of capital.

Organisations must carefully manage three things — time, capital and bandwidth.

It is equally important to identify which functions are core to growth and which can be outsourced. At Earthling, we chose to outsource areas such as tax & legal compliance, payrolls, etc. so that our internal teams could focus entirely on sales and market development.

This ensured that we do not waste our limited bandwidth on areas which don’t play an active role in organisation growth.

The mantra that keeps me going

If there is one thing entrepreneurship teaches you, it is resilience.

Never be afraid of the big “F” word — failure. Every failure is either a lesson or work in progress. What matters is persistence.

For women entrepreneurs, my advice is simple: do not wait for perfect circumstances. Start small if needed, prove your concept and build step by step.

And most importantly, let competence and results speak louder than stereotypes.

Because in the end, building a business is not just about taking risks. It is about staying relentless long after the leap has been taken.

Founder, Earthling Consumer Products Pvt. Ltd.