DARE - Because Entrepreneurs Do

I started with many handicaps. But all of them were set aside by the biggest asset I had—the desire to become a successful entrepreneur.

Vaibhavi Thakkar

I came from a modest background. I had inherited neither money nor financial acumen. But the journey towards my dream taught me that what I did not have was inconsequential. What really mattered was my belief that I could achieve anything with three things: the courage to dream, desire to work hard and unassailable integrity. I knew I had all of them. But the journey itself was by no means without its trying moments.

I still remember the early days of struggle, the long, lonely journeys in local buses and trains. To add to my misery, the cruel world scoffed at a 22-year-old woman who dared to think big. "She’ll never make it," people sniggered. Those memories will stay with me and keep my feet firmly planted to the ground.

But I had a more difficult critic to please—myself. I had raised the bar by swearing that I will not be one of those faces in the crowd, living in oblivion. Also, I set very high standards of performance and considered anything less a crime.
The learning curve of ever-growing new financial instruments, the ability to read a client’s mind and the pain of successfully executing a deal took its own toll. But with these experiences in the pocket, I was ready for a lifetime of challenges.

And then, there was the real differentiator, my team. I was lucky to find professionals who shared my thoughts and dreams. Together, we would spend sleepless nights thinking about our clients and how we could fulfill their dreams and, in turn, generate revenue for our company.

For our clients, most of them small and medium entrepreneurs, everything we said was a litany of jargons. Terms like external commercial borrowings, factoring, commercial paper, subsidiary financing made very little sense to them. All they wanted was the money to finance their business.

Gradually everything changed. I already had the conviction and passion to serve my clients. To all these I added the ability to hold the hand of my clients and walk them towards their dream.

Challenge
The biggest challenge was of getting the right people at the right time. We did not have anything to offer to the staff. Our office was not swanky, so we could not have given them a great work atmosphere. We did not have a brand name and to complicate matters, we were unable to pay big money.

So, we decided to attract people with the only thing we could offer—a dream. A dream to become an integrated financial power-house that offers end-to-end solutions to small and medium enterprises.

The challenge was to turn ordinary workers into extra-ordinary professionals. Fortunately, we sold our conviction to all our key people even when we had nothing to promise them.

Today, they are our business partners. Like our business, they too have grown bigger. We firmly believe that the best CEOs evolve within the organization. I am glad that all our ordinary people have been instrumental in making our company Blend grow multifold with their extraordinary efforts and innate drive.

During our early years, people who came for job interviews were skeptical about us and doubted our future. Today, when I see a lot of veterans from the industry in our organization, I think of that initial struggle and realize how far we have come together. The distant dream has turned into a robust reality.