humans of leap - stuti ashok gupta
stuti ashok gupta is the co-founder of amrutam, a part-time mental health professional, a fearless daughter, a leap.club member, and this is her story.
i grew up in gwalior at a time when extended families in society were quite patriarchal. i had seen women getting married at 21 and having kids by 24. luckily for me, my parents were very liberal. they gave me and my brother equal opportunities and education. my childhood? days were full of sanskrit classes, kathak class, hindustani classical music, and photoshop illustrator, which was the new thing in town at that point. thanks to which, my creative horizon was broadened early in life.
growing up, i always knew that i didn’t want to work for someone else, but for the longest time, i didn't know what i would do in a small town like gwalior. when i took up psychology as a career, i worked many jobs. i worked at gramiksha - an ngo which worked for children studying in government schools; and seva kutir, which is an extension of tihar jail. but after close to six years of working these impactful jobs, i realized that social impact only comes from capitalism.
between 2014-2016, i took 40+ trips and discovered my love for travelling. i eventually moved to the mountains to work independently. i started a backpacker hostel, the lost tribe in 2016, but something unexpected happened right after: i was diagnosed with clinical depression. i discovered i had, what is called, seasonal affective disorder. i'd have sudden bursts of crying, and i wouldn't know what was happening. during this time, i realized how important social support is when someone is struggling mentally, and i think people continue to struggle for a long time because in most cases, there's no support, no acknowledgment, and only stigma attached. i went to bangalore and started therapy for the first time. it took me a long time to get out of that phase (as i can now call it) of my life and started prepping for my masters. i got through my dream university in scotland with a scholarship, and things were finally looking up for me!
just as i was prepping for my new life, i got a call. we found out that my parents were struggling with their business and had lost their main source of income. they were national distributors to major pharmaceutical companies and had lost the affiliation after 30 years - they were shaken and in deep crisis. over and above all this, my brother and i later found out that our father was suffering from depression. a man who worked 14-16 hours a day and loved every bit of it - suddenly had nothing to do. a man who stood up for us every single time we needed, seeing him like that was heartbreaking as a daughter.
for my father, someone who was always travelling, meeting people, doing things to now just being in a room and doing nothing for hours on end, not wanting to talk to anyone, not meet anyone - it was pretty bad. he had seen his business crash and burn and what that does to an entrepreneur, only a few know. that's when my brother and i decided to quit our own startup and the scholarship of our dream, and returned home for good.
initially, i won’t lie, i didn’t handle the change well. i couldn't go abroad to study, i had quit my backpacker hostel and i was back to the city i worked hard to get out of. eventually, i realised that my parents had never burdened me with any expectations, always given me wings to fly, and this was (finally) my time to give back.
my brother and i thought that we will pull our father’s business out of the slump and then go back to do our thing. fast forward to today - that never happened. over time, we rebranded all his ayurvedic formulations under amrutam, got 100% involved in the business and now handle a larger part of business. initially, i didn't know anything about ayurveda or marketing, but one thing we were always taught as kids was that if you're a seed, no matter where you're planted, you will grow, as long as you’re watered. of course, it was challenging: it was 2017, we were in a tier-two city, and ‘d2c’ as a word wasn’t booming as it is today. it was a different ball game altogether.
amrutam then, was a breath of new life for our family. to this day, i remember the first time when we were all sitting at the dining table and our first-ever order came from banaras, and the look on my father’s face… something changed within him: a child-like glee, sheer joy, and more importantly: hope.
i remember him saying “what will i contribute to this internet business?” in the beginning. but when he started seeing orders come in, he started making more ayurvedic formulations, more products, and got back with a new burst of energy to r&d. for me, my love for community building became my source of fulfilment and my dad’s smile, my motivation.
our products were unique and meant for an audience that needed solutions, a community that really wanted to understand ayurveda. selling wasn’t our only agenda, ever. we wanted to change the thought that only ‘old people’ and ‘sadhus’ practising yoga are into ayurveda. running ads, being one of the first ones to try influencer marketing, getting away with old boring designs to new branding + modern packaging that justifies the uniqueness of our products, writing blogs to educate our members and so many other bold, ‘new age’ experiments paid off.
what started off as one order a month, grew to 4000 orders a month in 3 years - a 250% jump in revenue. from a 3 person team to 40+ with 1 lac+ customers and the positive impact on over 10,000 women struggling with pcod, got listed under forbes list 30 under 30 and even a feature in shark tank india! we have not had overnight success. you burn your hands multiple times - eventually you win. today we have 100+ products on our website, and my father, mr. ashok gupta is out there, with way more energy than any of us. :)
there are so many problems plaguing the start-up ecosystem of the country. not many talk about the mental taxation managing a venture comes with. as entrepreneurs, i think comparison is one of the main reasons why a lot of us struggle; you're constantly thinking “if i'm making x amount in my business, it's profitable, my team is doing well, my product is selling well. but oh, now i see that the other brand came out 2 years ago and it's making 10x revenue.” there's a lot of (self induced) pressure because as the leader, you feel you cannot afford to fail. you cannot afford to make mistakes. you can’t even think about taking a break. but i have realised that whenever i am able to accept that i've made a mistake at work, it has only made me more human and more relatable to the people i work with rather than be the person who's always perfect.
as women, we constantly try to fit in, fight the world without recognizing what we bring to the table. like emotional intelligence, like our ability to perceive things uniquely, like our resilience. we keep everything aside and try to compare ourselves to other ‘male’ leaders. my learning has been to value the differences, and define our own parameters for growth, success, a good life, good business, and a good team. therein lies our power. it is time we come into our own; it is time we come into our powers.
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