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Sangeeta Taluja: Finding Purpose in Company Creations

“My next big challenge was that the industry is male-dominated. But this business was an addiction and a passion for me.”

96Victoria Flexner
By Victoria Flexner

This story is part of our 1,000 stories campaign. What’s your story?

Name: Sangeeta Taluja

Business: BeyondFrame, exhibit and retail design services

Industry: Design, Professional Services

Location: New Delhi, India

Reason for starting: I founded my company, BeyondFrame, in 2011 after spending 12 years in exports from India, where I was handling reputed accounts with Europe. I was always willing to play with materials, techniques and knowledge. I wanted to give birth to ideas and cultivate them into beautiful shapes for productive reasons, instead of showing them off in the drawing room. I wanted to be the reason more families are fed and to provide employment with growth. I prayed for my life to be more meaningful.

Related: Read about another design entrepreneur here. 

How do you define success? The smile on faces on completion of every project gives me peace and purpose to my life. Every creation is connected to God, because the success of each creation is satisfaction to my team members, artists and my clients and myself.

Biggest Success: Yet to be achieved. My gut feeling is that whatever is achieved till now is part of the process and I am still learning. Working towards the biggest success.

What is your top challenge and how have you addressed it? The biggest challenge in the beginning was that I had zero money to start this business….. no savings or source of money in hand to start a new venture. I managed to earn first order with an advance amount of 40,000 rupees from the client. From that first payment I registered my company BeyondFrame with Service Tax and opened a current account in bank which needed 10,000 rupees as the minimum deposit, and that’s how BeyondFrame came into existence.

My next big challenge was that the industry is male-dominated. But this business was an addiction and a passion for me. Having previous experience in exports, I put my efforts into procurement of materials and innovation of new ideas in designs proposed to our clients. Sharp procurement helped us to control the prices, and new ideas promoted the sale of designs. Since my academic background is garment manufacturing technology, knowledge of production and manufacturing processes helped me to fine tune the quality of projects while in construction. All three things together — pricing, design and quality –supported me to be in a winning situation in a male-dominated industry. My clients admire when they see me on the floor and watch me handling transport, logistics and PR all at once.
Who is your most important role model? I pick the learnings from day-to-day episodes. Every person, happening or big and small experiences guide or motivate me to go further. Of course there are personalities too who influence me. Some of them are Ratan Tata and one of my clients Dr. Praveen.

 

[box_light]www.beyondframe.com
Facebook.com/beyondframe[/box_light]

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Edited by The Story Exchange