The Way I Work | Ishita Swarup, 99labels

One is both the CEO and office peon. That’s the charm of a start-up."

Deep within Ishita Swarup there’s a bit of an adrenaline junkie hidden somewhere. It’s easy to be fooled by her fragile appearance, but she admits soon enough that the “unexplored or uncharted” attracts her almost instantly. If it feels like a challenge, she is most definitely taking the plunge. Take her obsession with Microlight aircrafts for instance. It’s not every day that people with vertigo take temporary lessons in aviation schools for a lark. Then, there was the momentary idea to take up Kathak as a profession. After all, she was trained for 14 years and more. That dropped, Cadbury came calling. Swarup, however, quickly realised that she wasn’t perhaps “too good with authority”. Bitten by the entrepreneurial bug, she decided to launch her first start-up. A sale and a sabbatical later, another business idea hit her. Together with her partner, Anchal Jain, Swarup launched 99labels, an online shopping portal that offers deep discounts on branded ware. 99labels now has representatives in Paris, New York and Mumbai. Swarup likes to spend the first hour of her day in the quite of her office den, which is why she gets to office before anyone else does. The rest of the day is all about meetings and looking for ways to make 99labels more efficient and profitable.

I like to beat my colleagues and employees to the office and reach by 9.15am, and that’s the latest. The first thing I do is retreat into my office den. To use a clichéd expression, that one hour is “me time”. I organise my thoughts, check mails, do a post-mortem of the previous day and also plan things out. 

On a usual work day, you are constantly doing meetings and taking decisions on the fly. There is hardly any time to sit quietly and think. So, that one hour is really precious to me.

That’s why I try to get up as early as possible, which is somewhere between 7.30am to 7.45am. Otherwise, early mornings are a bummer. I’ve never been a morning person. Between my sleepy self, newspapers and the rush to get ready, let’s just say breakfasts are far from happy meals.

Earlier, I used to just skip the entire affair. Now, I just try to gulp down something. The morning meal may not be a feast, but at least I am regular now. And I am someone who has to eat every two hours. I appreciate people who go without eating lunch or dinner, but to put it lightly I would perish if I had to. My constitution is simply not built that way.

My office is not very far from my house. I like to spend that time to catch up on calls and check e-mails. I have reached a point where I have realised that the device is not a part of me and I can simply switch it off. In my earlier stints, I was plugged in 24X7. I am much better. But even now in the mornings, gadgets, especially the BlackBerry, are simply indispensable.

Once office hours begin, it’s all meetings: internal and in-office ones. At this point, work is about experimentation. Products that did well yesterday, impact our strategies for tomorrow. Let’s say over the weekend we introduce a new section, the response to which isn’t positive, not even internally.

The beginning of the week then goes into solving that problem—dealing with questions like how do we do it different or better. In an online segment like ours, decisions have to be made within a day, sometimes an hour, depending upon the kind of resource we put in it. There are so many calls that have to be taken: what sort of product to launch, its logistics, delivery and packaging.

99labels is at a point when we are scaling rapidly. On one hand, that’s brilliant. On the other, there aren’t many learnings to go by. Decisions are taken collectively, and sometimes they simply land up on my plate and I take a call. 

That’s what the CEO, I believe, does in a start-up mode. She or he gets to play all the roles, bit by bit. On one hand, you are involved in taking micro-managerial decisions like the nitty-gritty of which product goes where, when and how.

On the other side, you are also playing the macro-managerial role, planning, strategising and looking at the year’s target. In between, you are also changing a particular brand of coffee that people don’t like at work because it tastes yucky. Then there is the macro-managerial role demanding planning, strategising and looking at the year’s target. I feel, its this fluid condition, which is the most charming aspect of a start up.

Fluidity is a start-up’s charm. On any given day, one is both the CEO and office peon. I meet enough folks at senior levels, who aren’t sure if they would like to get their hands dirty. And unless you do like getting your hands dirty, start-ups aren’t for you. In a moment of crisis, I expect everyone in my team to roll up their sleeves and help pack and move to the next office. We are not large enough to have “backups” for every role. If the customer care guys decide not to turn up, I expect the rest of the team to start taking calls. In fact, I usually encourage people to take up this role as often as possible. I do it myself at times.

Currently, we have close to 100 people. We are constantly adding to the teams. Our marketing team is doubling, as is the customer care section. As I see it now, there are two things that we are doing as a start-up: we are keeping pace with our growth and moving beyond that. As we expand, so do the offices. 99labels now has representatives in Paris, New York and Mumbai. We are also in the process of setting up office down south.

Off late, there have been so many things happening in Delhi that I have not been able to travel as much as I would like to, or in fact, need to. The other reason I travel is because of my speaking engagements with a few start-up mentoring platforms. I encourage youngsters I meet who want to be entrepreneurs to come to my office, and see how a start-up functions. I enjoy the time I give to organisations like TiE. It’s great to be in the thick of energy and ideas people are coming up with.

The idea for 99labels came along when I was taking a sabbatical. I had sold off my first start-up and was trying to figure out what to do next. That is when I met Anchal Jain, my co-founder. He’d seen sites like 99labels flourish in Europe, especially France. He was confident the idea would work here too. And why wouldn’t it? For the consumer, the lure of the proposal lay in the deep discounts on branded items and the ease of online shopping experience. For the brands, our platform provided a space where they could liquidate extra stocks, a clear need today. This is especially true in case of apparel, which becomes dead stock after a season or two.

There are two kinds of consumers who come to sites like ours: shopaholics who shop online, offline and more, and folks like me. I wouldn’t call myself a shopaholic, but I like my clothes. Then again, I am perpetually running short of time, so online shopping makes sense. Then, there are customers in the Tier-II and III cities. Even if they have the time, they don’t have access to brands. If you were to scrape away all the fluff around 99labels, it still remains a sensible proposition. Most importantly, it appeals to a woman since its a fun thing to do.

We do not have fixed time for lunches. It starts when anyone gets hungry and opens his lunch pack. People just start gathering around. Sometimes, I will go out to join them or they come into my office. We usually end up talking shop over lunch. It’s a little impossible for us to switch off in office. We are constantly on the Facebook page, or taking in calls, trying to gauge responses and putting things in order.

I have been blessed with a team which is very enthusiastic about what we do. We are a like-minded bunch and our work culture is defined by this love. On Valentine’s Day last year, a young customer wanted to gift his partner flowers and a present. We don’t deliver flowers. But, this guy in my team who received the call, used his own cash to buy the roses and got them delivered along with the present. I got to know about this only after I read the customer’s positive testimonial on Facebook. I love that we have this sense of ownership. It makes office a great place to be, especially since we all spend a better part of day here.

I am lucky to have this because commitment to one’s job is not something money or authority can deliver. Employees either have it or don’t. I see mistakes and risk-taking as positive aspects. It means somebody was taking an initiative. So what if it didn’t turn out well? It would the next time.

It’s work and nothing else till 6pm. In between there are coffee or chai breaks. Even here, we end up discussing work. I used to be a coffee junkie but I am trying hard to cut down. I am a high-energy person and caffeine adds to that. Even with the three cups I have now, I am bad news for people after 6pm. After that, I switch off. It’s not fair to my colleagues, employees and their families if I keep on working beyond office hours, because I drag them into the work as well.

Evenings are usually reserved for my daughter, and sometimes when I am feeling especially virtuous, to exercise. If there is something important to tend to, I put my daughter to sleep and then take calls between 10pm and 11.30pm. Otherwise, I use this time to unwind. Mostly, I read a book or catch the news. With my attention span, a movie is out of the question. I either get bored or distracted. But telly soaps like How I Met Your Mother are great. They are funny, short and light, just what I need after a crazy day.

I take a break once every three months or, sometimes, even sooner. I either travel alone or go some place with friends and family. I most look forward to the annual 10-day holiday I take with my family. We went to Kerala, Bali and New Zealand on our past few trips; now I want a new place to explore. But, still, nothings beats going to the hills. I have lived a major part of my childhood in Bhutan. Therefore, the hills are almost a part of my being. They are my sanctuary.

I also look forward to travelling because it gives me a chance to catch up on readiing. There’s nothing better than curling up with a book while on a holiday. I am a bookworm. I can’t read on a regular work day while in Delhi because my mind is so consumed.

While getting ready for bed, I’m ususally thinking of the many plans I have. There’s lots I want to do with my life. I’d love to start a platform for classical Indian dancers and singers. I’ve learnt Kathak for years, and I’m passionate about the Indian arts. Perhaps one day, I’ll do something in that space. I doze off making plans like this, typically around midnight.

We are keeping pace with our growth and moving beyond that."