HTBV Podcast: How She dropped out of Harvard to Change the Lives of 600M women in India | Achitha Jacob

To celebrate International Women’s Day 2024, and part of our annual Vertex Female Leader Series, we are sharing beautiful, untold stories of our female leaders overcoming the odds and obstacles to build businesses that are disruptive, yet transformative to the lives of many. Today we are proud to feature Achitha Jacob.

Watch/ Listen to the episode on

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/hard-truths-by-vertex/id1659392336?i=1000648045752

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3r6TPcbcH83Gp23l3G2A9B

YouTube: https://youtu.be/965Fvfl2FsU?feature=shared

Who we are

Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India is a pioneer in investing in tech start-ups in this region and has helped to build a number of unicorns. In this podcast, we want to share and uncover Hard Truths — raw, unfiltered insights and venture capital experience across Southeast Asia & India. Tune in to hear from leading founders, innovators, venture capitalists and industry experts in the region and to gain industry insights from those in the know.

In this Episode

00:00 | What is Proactive For Her?

05:28 | Why did She drop out of Harvard?

06:54 | What were the ups and downs of the entrepreneurial journey?

13:28 | Online or offline business?

17:37 | How has the journey with Vertex been?

18:49 | How did she build education and awareness in this space?

22:41 | Are women willing to invest in their health?

25:52 | What does it take to be successful as a sole founder?

29:38 | What’s the difference between being a leader and a manager?

33:46 | How resilience helped her get through the difficult times

39:37 | Closing

Our Guest, Achitha Jacob’s Bio:

Achitha Jacob is the founder of Proactive For Her. Proactive For Her is an omni-channel women’s health clinic offering judgement-free, personalised, and confidential healthcare solutions. They address the health concerns of Indian women across their lifetime — from puberty to menopause and beyond. Their services are available online, at home, and at their Bangalore clinics. Be it spreading awareness about annual check-ups to include pap smears and cancer screening, cervical cancer vaccination (HPV vaccination), STI/ STD screening or helping women take that leap of faith and book their first gynaecology consultation, they want to empower every Indian woman to take charge of her own health and wellness journey.

Proactive has helped 50,000+ women learn more about their sexual and menstrual health and access quality medical care. Young and old(er) women love that Proactive is able to provide them a safe space to address their sexual, menstrual & reproductive health concerns. They have done extensive work on extremely niche and taboo topics like vaginismus, a condition which is not very well understood in India.

An alumnus of IIT-Bombay, Achitha dropped out of Harvard Business School to build Proactive For Her. She has previously worked with Fortune 500 healthcare companies and healthcare startups.

Visit https://www.proactiveforher.com for more.

Elise: Today I’m excited to be speaking with Achitha Jacob, founder of Proactive For Her. Proactive For Her wants to empower every single woman to take charge of their health and wellness journey and helped 50,000+ women learn more about their sexual and menstrual health and access quality healthcare. An alumnus of IIT Bombay, Achitha dropped out of Harvard Business School to build Proactive for Her. She previously worked for other Fortune 500 healthcare companies and healthcare startups.

She has previously worked with other Fortune 500 healthcare companies and healthcare startups. So let’s hear from Achitha. Hi Achitha. It’s so good to have you here. How are you?

Achitha Jacob: Hi Elise, I’m good. How are you doing?

Elise: Good. And we really appreciate you taking time because we know that you have been launching quite a few clinics.

So tell us, you know, what has been going on with Proactive For Her?

What is Proactive For Her?

Achitha Jacob: A lot of exciting stuff, actually. We’re very quickly ramping up from three and four clinics last year to closer to seven by the end of next month. Which means that you’ll find Proactive in more places in Bangalore and that’s exciting.

Elise: Yeah, seven clinics is a feat, more than double like what you have now.

Achitha Jacob: Yeah. So our first clinic was the only one for 10 months. And then we very quickly figured what’s working and decided to replicate quickly.

Elise: Yeah. So tell us more about what Proactive For Her is all about. And, you know, if we were to go to one of your clinics, so what can we expect?

Achitha Jacob: Yeah. If you look at the last decade in India, when it comes to women’s health, the large two categories of solutions that have been built out is birthing. You can go to a hospital and give birth and you have brands like Cloudnine and Motherhood. And then it’s IVF, where you have brands like Indira IVF, Nova IVF, Milann, IVF access (A Vertex Ventures SEA and India portfolio company). All of these brands building out for that solution and what we’re trying to do at Proactive For Her is envisioning the next decade of women’s health in India. What are the solutions, services, products, and offerings that need to be built out.

Elise: That sounds great and I’m sure it’s addressing a strong need. So tell us about how did you come to, you know, start Proactive For Her, what inspired you?

Achitha Jacob: Yeah, I think a combination of factors from both, my personal life as well as my professional life. So I grew up as a young woman in her 20s living in Bombay and Bangalore, which are some of the larger metro cities in the country. And I had my own instances of not finding the right care for myself with regards to my sexual health and my menstrual health. But I was also working in healthcare. So I was working for a Fortune 500 healthcare company, and I got to see firsthand the way that healthcare in India works and. What are some of the gaps and came out of that experience entirely convinced that there’s a huge opportunity to build for women’s health, going beyond what already exists in the context of pregnancy and IVF and solving for so many other items, right, including sexual health, menstrual health, sexual dysfunction, which is hardly spoken about in the country.

A lot of gaps in prenatal and postpartum pelvic health issues, perimenopause, menopause, cancer screening and prevention. It’s just a huge gap and a huge space that needs to be covered.

Elise: Yeah, I must say that you are really courageous because I think not just in India, in Asia, right. Menstrual health and all the areas that you mentioned are kind of a taboo word in some way. Yeah. So, you’re really kind of pushing the boundaries. And then, secondly, you know, is, it reminds me of a conversation in Roshni (Founder and Group CEO of The Parentinc) as well, that how she saw a gap, an issue, you know, something that is missing in Asia and then coming out the solution herself.

Yeah, and I must commend both of you. Yeah. So as you know.

Achitha Jacob: Thank you, Elise.

Elise: Thank you. And you know, this is part of our International Women’s Day series where we honor our Vertex founders and leaders. So this is part of the Vertex Female Leaders series.

Yeah, so you mentioned, you know, about, how you have worked for a large healthcare company. And I also know through our article previously that you have actually quit Harvard. So what led you to that decision?

(Image of the article where we featured Achitha Jacob previously)

Why did she drop out of Harvard?

Achitha Jacob: Oh, wow. so I get asked this question very often and I feel like, when I was actually quitting Harvard or dropping out, I, I didn’t think about it so deeply but it was a very instinctual gut reaction. I’ve known, since 2017 that I wanted to build a women’s healthcare company and obviously had no means to do it.

While the problem that we’re solving has always been super clear. the How. and the What hasn’t been, so having the opportunity to build this dream company is kind of the motivation to drop out. We raised a bit of funding during my summer. So I’d completed a year and then decided that I’m going to take this funding and go build, the company of my dreams, which is also, I think my life’s work.

Elise: Yeah, and we are glad to have partnered you on this journey ever since. Firstly, as a woman entrepreneur in Asia, that is rare. And then secondly, you are tackling problems for women’s health, and that is rare. Yeah, so what do you discover along the way? Like, was it really, was it challenging, you know, to build what you envision? What kind of advice would you have for female entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs in general?

What were the ups and downs of the Entrepreneurial journey?

Achitha Jacob: You know, being a founder is hard irrespective of what company you’re building, and what gender you are or whether or not you have cofounders, right? I think that’s the starting point is always very hard. I’m not an entrepreneur because I always wanted to be an entrepreneur.

I chose to be an entrepreneur because I wanted to solve a problem that was very close to my heart. And I felt that I was the best person to solve this problem and I think that’s a little audacious to make as a statement that you know in this entire country of 1 billion people, I think I’m best equipped, but I knew in my heart that no matter how many challenges I would face or how many obstacles I had to overcome, I wouldn’t give up, I knew I had the resilience to go forward on this problem statement, which may have not been true for any other problem statement, right?

So it was a very specific kind of company that I was, signing up to build. so that’s been the easy part. I’ve always been super motivated, super pumped to wake up every day in the morning and go build this company that I’ve always wanted to. And I’m motivated along the way by the fantastic reviews we get by our customers. So that is a constant source of drive that, that I think is very hard to ignore or replicate. In terms of what’s been hard, you know, for us, while we’ve always been very clear on how we’ve defined the problem for our customers and in the context of India, what’s not been clear, how do we solve the problem, right? What does it look like to create a product market fit to create a large, repeatable, scalable business, that has positive unit economics and, you know, can penetrate beyond, the first five cities and be a really deep, profitable business. That’s something we’ve had to figure out along the way.

Elise: Yeah, you know, you are so inspirational. This also reminds me of the conversation I have again with Roshni. She mentioned about how, if you want to be an entrepreneur, be prepared to be committed for at least 15 years of your life. And, you know, when we think about 15 years, you know, it’s really easily one third of your working life.

Achitha Jacob: Yeah, I would agree with that a hundred percent, I think as human beings, we always overestimate what we can achieve in one year, and we always underestimate what we can achieve in 10 years. And the power of compounding is very real, right?

You know, you go to any, investment guru and they’ll say, sit still, invest, right? Put your money in and don’t touch it. Let, let the power of time and compounding do its thing. And I think that’s a hundred percent true of building companies because you’re constantly solving challenges. And you’re constantly reducing friction and building a brand, which is not meaningful probably in the first 365 days, but as the years go by, it becomes harder and harder to displace and harder and harder to replicate.

When I was younger in my twenties, I would always think about my career as, okay, so what is it that I’m going to achieve in the next two years, right? So I switched jobs every two years for the first four years, and then the MBA was supposed to be another two years sprint.

And then you move away from that mindset when you want to build something that’s large. And outlast you as an individual, then you have to start thinking in 10 years time frame.

Elise: I really love your analogy about the power compounding. We think about career as a linear path. But the truth is, it is more like a spherical thing that kind of grows, you know, and then a neural network where more and more connects and over time, it has some kind of exponential impact. Yeah. So, so I love your analogy. You also mentioned earlier on how your customers write in, you know, to mention, to share about how they have benefited from the treatments, you know, from the services. Tell us a bit about some of these stories.

Achitha Jacob: I have hundreds of emails from our customers that, you know, describe how life changing we’ve been for them. maybe, maybe one example I would talk about is, one of our, maybe smaller revenue streams, but probably most impactful work has been in the area of sexual dysfunction.

So when it comes to male sexual dysfunction, most people have heard the word ED or erectile dysfunction. but you know, there are female equivalents of that. And one of them is when you’re unable to have penetrative sex and it’s painful. There’s primary and secondary vaginismus. And we have a program that solves for that and our program has healed over 300 women, and it’s not a large number in the context of As having served more than 50,000 women, it’s, it’s a much smaller number. but the impact stories are incredibly high and it’s a particularly meaningful program for us internally at the company level because no one else is solving for that in the country. And we see, you know, we always have a wait list months on end for folks to join the program and we’d love to scale it. And we, we are, you know, we used to do. maybe around 8 or 10 customers every month, and now we do close to 65–70 every month.

Elise: That’s great. And, I also caught a number, you know, you mentioned about 50,000 women, who’ve been, use, use your products or. Yeah.

Achitha Jacob: The last few years, both online at home, as well as in clinic. Yeah, we’ve served a considerable number of women.

Elise: And that’s great because you know, we going back to the power of compounding that you mentioned. I think the first time when I interviewed you for article, you mentioned about how 5,000 women has come through the doors of Proactive For Her online and in person. And look at this now, you know, it’s like 10 times increase. Yeah, so that’s really good.

So I also want to go back to, you know, the beginning, because, when we talked to you about your idea, it was about, an online platform. Yeah. But now, you know, you have also grown offline as well. So what was, kind of, you know, the journey leading up to that decision, you know, go offline as well. Tell us more about it!

Online or offline business?

Achitha Jacob: Yeah, sure. we did start in 2020, which as we all remember, there wasn’t too much offline stuff happening, between 2020 and 2021. It just was the times. So I think, in terms of building an offline clinic, there was always that idea in my mind. I come previously from an offline health care background firstly.

So experience that firsthand. you know, because of COVID, we didn’t really venture into that space for the first one, one and a half years And even then we didn’t know What would be the split of our offline business versus our online business? Right. cause initially when we were thinking about it, we understood the value prop of having an offline clinic. For example, you can’t get a pap smear sitting at home, right. You need to go visit a clinic and a doctor will conduct the procedure for you. So we understood what was the gap with online at home and the requirement of a physical space. We didn’t have clarity back then or whether that would be one clinic. Or three clinics in a city or even more, right?

And these are kind of answers that revealed itself. So I would say when we opened finally, you know, at, at the end of the third wave of COVID, when we opened our, first clinic in Bangalore, we didn’t really have visibility on How large that revenue stream would look, would the clinic be profitable, what would the catchment area, the number of people coming in, how far were they traveling?

These were answers we discovered over time, which built our conviction on, expanding. So our first clinic is profitable, which has sort of given us a lot of visibility on one version.

So 60 percent of our revenue comes from offline clinics. But we do have 40 percent of our revenues still come from online and at home services. and we expect, A mix of both online at home and clinic revenue as we move forward, the most of our expansion strategy, and our investment is going into putting clinics on the ground first within Bangalore and then as we expand beyond Bangalore and other cities as well.

Elise: Yeah, that makes sense. Would you say that you’re getting to a place of product market fit? And how does that feel like?

Achitha Jacob: Yeah, definitely. I definitely feel like we, we have product market fit today, which is why we’re also scaling some parts of the business quite aggressively, given that we are very much, offline plus online fidgeting hybrid company, the way it makes sense for us to define our business is to look at, economics on three levels. So one is a clinic first economics. So look at the unit economics of a single clinic and what does EBITDA profitability at that clinic look like? The second kind of layer that we would look at internally is. city level profitability. So, not just one clinic, but Can all clinics in a city, for example, Bangalore, be operationally profitable. And then, you know, we obviously have a headquarter cost internally, which is, the corporate team that sits out of Bangalore, and how many cities and how many clinics do we need to have before, those clinics are supporting the cost of headquarters. Which means we do need to have a lean mean machine in a corporate team.

It’s somewhere to expand to, you know, hundreds of people indefinitely, it’s going to be. Very similar to the size that we have today.

Elise: Yeah, it’s amazing that, you’re capturing this data because it’s definitely helpful in terms of guiding your next step of, you know, expansion and business growth. Yes. we supported Proactive For Her since 2020 and, Kanika (Mayar) is, your, investment manager.

So tell us about, you know, how has the journey been working with Vertex? And maybe, and maybe how do you know Vertex in the first place?

How has the Journey with Vertex been?

Achitha Jacob: I think I got introduced to Kanika through. So it was very accidental, actually. I didn’t know Kanika pre being a founder. And it’s been amazing working with her. She really understands what is the space we’re building in, the gaps we’re solving for. working with the Vertex team, including, and especially Kanika has been very rewarding because, you know, what is did come in before we had sort of mapped out our offline online split and mix, and they’ve been very supportive to do the right thing for the company and the right thing for our customer as we’ve moved forward. and, you know, with their support and the support of the board, we’ve been able to drive a strategy that’s gotten us to product market fit for our clinics.

Elise: That’s really good to hear. At this point, I was so curious, you know, because I guess that before you, there might be not a lot of education, you know, on the kind of, care that woman could have for, you know, whether the menstruation or before and after birth, then how do you go about driving that education and adoption?

How did She build Awareness in this space?

Achitha Jacob: Yeah, that’s a great question because, you know, we’re one of the few companies working, in this space, which means that we often have to build the education and awareness for the market that we want to sell to because women are not informed. There’s not that much common knowledge, common language that they use to be able to describe what is the help they need to get. For example, you know, the term vaginismus is often not known to the women who often suffer from that condition themselves. That education and awareness, introducing that language is really important. So when we build education and awareness, the way we kind of, go to market per se, is we talk a lot about the kind of symptoms. women can diagnose for themselves and have them call in. The idea with that is, healthcare is a highly considered product.

So while you might see, you know, some accessories on Tiktok and just purchase it right away. you won’t do that for your health. You don’t walk into a doctor’s clinic on a whim or get a blood test on a whim, right? It’s all well researched, well considered, very thoughtful purchase. And you also need to be convinced that this is the best thing for you, for your body and your health.

And in that context, a good portion of our customers would want to speak to somebody before they make a purchase. We have a fantastic sales team that leads these efforts. And we have a lot of product training and clinical training that we do for our customers being able to have a friendly conversation with somebody who calls in on what their options could look like. Obviously not from a clinical perspective and not as a doctor, but just in terms of these are the resources.

And the different types of resources available that they can access, and, and these are what their options look like. So for example, if someone calls in and says, you know, I have painful sex and I’d like to solve for it, you know, then our team would tell them a little bit more about what are the symptoms of primary, secondary vaginismus typically, and would talk them through their options, which would include, you may be joining an online program, if they would not want to commit to a program, they can also speak to.

A lot of our gynaecologists and therapists, to get a diagnosis for themselves, first. We also have the option of them meeting one of our pelvic flow physiotherapists within the clinic. So if they’re in Bangalore, they could book an appointment in a clinic, meet either the gynaecologists who are well equipped to diagnose any matters related to painful sex.

But also a physiotherapist who can sort of walk them through, the diagnosis as well. So there’s so many options and there’s so many specialties, right? You can speak to a mental health therapist, you can speak to a gynaecologist, you can speak to a physiotherapist. So just, giving them these range of options, which they may not find by Googling on the internet is the value add that our team creates and then enables them to take their first step that’s best suited for their needs.

Elise: Yeah, that’s great. That sounds really comprehensive. And, yeah, I think, you know, kudos to you for thinking about, how to tackle this space of education.

So, you know, Achitha, I remember about, the last time I interviewed you, you mentioned when you were working for another Fortune 500 company, you realized that women sometimes place a lot of emphasis on their family.

And, there were many times you saw they’d rather spend on the family rather than themselves. So in, you know, in this course of education, how do you convince women to be allocating, you know, more care, love and cash for, yeah, that woman’s health?

Are Women willing to Invest on their Health?

Achitha Jacob: Yeah, I think that’s where we’re a little bit lucky as a company because the next generation of women are all about self care and all about putting themselves first, right? Their mental health first, their physical health first, their ambitions first, just prioritizing themselves is something that we see now more than we’ve ever done, especially amongst younger women.

And today, 90 percent of our customers are between the ages of 20 and 35. So when it comes to asking them to prioritize their own health. That’s not a very difficult ask because they usually are very open to it and already believe that, their health is kind of something they want to invest in. In terms of just cash, the other good news for us as a company is women are doing extremely well when it comes to socioeconomic mobility in the country.

In terms of percentage of women who are graduating from colleges, the kind of incomes they’re drawing. They do have the money to spend and they’re happy to spend it on themselves.

Elise: That’s really good to hear. You know, sometimes when we look at investment, you know, our portfolio companies might be doing the same thing, but you know, when do they start when, you know, when’s the market ready their, for their product, it actually plays a strong part in their success and how long it takes to get to success.

Achitha Jacob: I think like maybe 10 years back, if we built the exact same company. Instead of building it in 2022, if we were doing it in 2012. I don’t know if we’ve seen the same kind of uptake as we do today, especially i metro and tier one cities.

There’s definitely been a huge change in terms of — we’ve been moving out of homes, getting jobs, being independent. a lot of our customers who come to our clinics have also moved to Bangalore for work. so that’s a trend that’s, that’s definitely seen a lot of increase over the last

Elise: And I’m really curious, you know, in terms of paying for the product and services, is that something that is part of the employee welfare scheme? Or is this something that, women actually pay out of their, you know, everyday expenses?

Achitha Jacob: Yeah. That’s a great question. So most insurance in India, whether it’s privately purchased by individuals or even provided by their companies, they usually cover only inpatient care. What that means is you need to be hospitalized for a period of 24 hours, for insurance to cover your bill. And unfortunately, we’re not an in-patient set up, right? So we’re largely outpatient. In that context, we’re 100 percent cash business.

So this is basically women using their own disposable income to take care of themselves.

Elise: Thanks for sharing that. And I think it’s really remarkable, you know, how, how you’ve been able to grow this business really quickly over the last two to three years.

I could tell you make it sound really easy and smooth flowing in terms of how you have grown your business, but I’m sure, you know, there are lots of challenges that come up from time to time. Can you tell us as of a challenge, you know, that you managed to overcome?

What does it take to be successful as a Sole Founder?

Achitha Jacob: Maybe I’ll talk about what it takes to be successful. So I am a single founder, which means that, you know, the buck stops with me, which is a lot of responsibility, and accountability, but also a lot of leverage, which makes me feel like, if anything doesn’t work, I have no one else to point the finger to, right?

So, creates a lot of internal accountability. But also requires you to think about How do you scale outcomes in a very different way? So one of the things that I’ve had to do, probably a little bit more proactively than a larger founding team is to very early on in the company to correct for culture.

There was definitely a period of time, a couple of years back where as a company on team, we were struggling with some of these aspects and it becomes very evident when instead of having a four-member founding team, which kind of puts the band aids on what’s not working, it becomes more apparent you do need to build in those systems of accountability, performance management and culture.

One of the challenges and one of the big learnings has been how important some of this intangible stuff is. And, being very disciplined, because you have that matrix of urgent versus important and while, you know, managing, internal performance and culture is very, very important, you, it’s never your first priority of that day.

You’re never going to wake up in the morning and say, today’s top priority is managing the culture of my company and the motivation of my team and how they see their growth part within the company. Which means, if you don’t prioritize it and you don’t work on it proactively, which there was a time that I didn’t, you will, it’ll catch up with you.

And I, I’m very diligent about doing that. w\What this means is sometimes you need to have very hard conversations with employees, and state the obvious, tell them what’s not working, what are the gaps, be okay with them feeling a little hurt or maybe liking you a little less or disagreeing with you or calling you out on your own bullshit, So all of these are sort of the things you have to sort of do. If you want to create a lot of transparency and push people to do the best that their roles require them to do.

Elise: Yeah, I’m glad you pointed out the importance of having a good culture and the part about how do you measure, productivity and also, how happy, you know, your employees are, because like you say, you know, this is never a priority because especially if you are VC funded, I think some of the things that is definitely your priority will be how do you grow the business, right.

It’s very clear that culture becomes something that is foundational and, you, it also helps to kind of, and retain, the, your, your team, right? Which is really important and it kind of self functions without you doing anything after a while after you set it up.

Yeah when we invest into our work, our portfolio, you know, it’s not just investing in an entrepreneur. It is also investing into a leader and, and then also investing in the leader again and again, as the leader develops his or her kind of potential and growth. Yeah. So, so we are really glad to see, you know, the kind of mindset that you have, the kind of growth that you have as a person, personally, and in terms of your business, yeah.I just want to celebrate that.

What’s the difference between being a Leader and a Manager?

Achitha Jacob: Yeah. Thanks. Thanks so much, Elise and one of the things I’ve learned probably over the last one year. There is a difference between a leader, an effective leader, and a manager, or an effective manager. Actually, these are two very different roles, and what I’ve introspected and understood is that, you know, I’m a natural leader.Like, I’m happy to talk about a vision. I’m happy to, you know, chart out a path, create the strategy, talk about what needs to be done. and, and that’s leadership in terms of being bold, taking risks, drawing out the vision, drawing out the mission. But what I’ve personally had to work fairly hard on, is being a manager, which is less sexy, less glamorous.

And a much more disciplined, endeavor in terms of, you know, putting out your quarterly plans with the team, ensuring that everybody understands what their KPIs are, being able to have regular check ins, have hard conversations when someone’s not performing, create pathways, that give folks who are not performing either other opportunities, or then have tough conversations about why they may not move forward in their role.

And doing so in a way that comes across as reasonable, fair, and also logical, right? So I, I feel like that’s been something I’ve had to learn a little bit more artificially. I wish someone had told me like four years back or three years back, there’s, there’s a difference between being a leader.

But being a good manager is something you have to develop skills and capabilities towards. And that’s okay. Everyone does that. So you might as well get started earlier.

Elise: Yeah, I think firstly, the important part is awareness, self awareness, right? So you clearly have that, which is in terms of how you have the innate leadership qualities and then later on, understanding about organizational management. So, I mean, that is another thing, right?Understanding organizational behaviors and then being able to kind of, know what the levers, you know, how do you manage others with underlying structure and culture? Yeah. So I, I think that this is definitely not easy and, to self learn. I think all this is really important to understand what it takes truly to kind of steer the business to a successful kind of level or to kind of put it on the path to success.

We have talked quite a bit about, your business, the growth, the challenges you face. would you have, more kind of advice for a female founder that is starting in India?

Achitha Jacob: I think this is applicable. For all founders in most places and not necessarily female founders in India is, don’t build a company for something that you’re not passionate about. I feel the day to day of an entrepreneur is very non glamorous, very humbling. There’s a lot of learning around the way there’s a lot of growth along the way. And for you. to have that growth and all growth is painful. Like I firmly believe that there is no growth that comes without being, to go through that painful process.As the company grows, you’re growing as an individual as well. I feel like that’s almost impossible to do if you are not a hundred percent committed to the problem that you want to solve, because there’s always going to be an easy way out.

Elise: yeah, totally agree. I mean, it sounds really iffy, I guess to some people, but it’s so totally true because I think if you were in it for the glamour, it’s very hard to have the grit.

Yeah. So, and, you remind me that I also forgot to mention that, For this year, our female series, the team is Resilience.So tell us of a time, you know, when you really have to kind of bite the bullet, you know, that it was really difficult and, somehow you managed to endure and made it through.

How resilience helped me get through the difficult times

Achitha Jacob: Yeah. again, so many times, I’ve been really hard. but I think there was a time like maybe a couple of years back, when we had just about set up our first clinic. and we were still sort of working out who our customers were, what were they buying? what, What did the successful version of that offline set up look like?

We didn’t have those answers yet and we were also going through a lot of pivoting as a company, which means we were refocusing team members, money. and efforts towards a little bit more offline, having been a 100 percent online company before that, there was a very painful process because you’re disrupting the team, you sometimes need to sort of, let whole team go because they’re redundant in the new context of the company.

This is a very painful part of like a team pivot. product pivot. and, you know, Obviously the first thing that everybody would say in that moment when things aren’t working, is that you have no idea what you’re doing. and that that criticism is most painful when it comes from internal sources.

And we did have a lot of team members where we disheartened that they couldn’t continue their journey with us. and there was quite a bit of. That backlash, I would say, which is understandable now, retrospectively, but felt very personal and very painful, in that moment of time. So I think the resilience for me at that point of time was to say, I am, you know, the owner of, of the destiny of myself, but also this company.

And even if you’re going through an incredibly hard time. You know, these six months, we can come out and here’s what that looks like, and then to sort of keep moving forward, despite a lot of criticism, from, from people who are a little bit more internal is I think the hardest thing. I think it’s very easy to ignore criticism when it comes from outside because they’re like, oh, they don’t know what they’re talking about.

I didn’t choose to, you know, choose these people. they are, They’re outsiders. I can ignore what they are saying. it’s a lot, lot more harder when the criticism is internal and even more harder when there’s an element of truth to that criticism. and I think being able to say, I accept, this is what it is today, but we’re going to move forward from here and just spearhead that effort.I remember I did a town hall. and I explained to the team that continue to understand why we made the decisions we made and why we were making the changes we were making and what that was going to look like and try to create a space where people could ask uncomfortable questions. I think that was probably the hardest time for me as a leader in the company and, again, I think what kept me going was a, I knew that we were helping our customers. I just knew we need to do more and different stuff. And we, I was always very, very clear about why I’m building this company and making the choices I am And that kind of helped me, keep going, even though the times are really, very tough.

Elise: Yeah, thanks for sharing this. I can imagine that it is really a tough time then, because, I mean, besides, before yourself, Guan Dian, who is a co founder of Patsnap, was was also on the show. She also mentioned about how when she had to let go like 80 percent of the company, it was one of the most challenging times. Yeah, I think. Particularly when, we feel like, you know, there are expectations, there are criticisms, there is a human or more than one human, you know, telling us things that they were unhappy about. I think that is often very challenging, very tough. Yeah.

Achitha Jacob: Yeah. Yeah. I also firmly believe that nobody. can criticize you better than the people who work under you because they see all your flaws more clearly than anybody else, right? I think you can always have a little bit of a good face. And beyond good behavior, So I feel the folks who have the most ammunition and leverage to tell you the hardest truths about yourself, are people in your team.

So it’s important sort of to listen to them and to understand where they’re coming from and, and work on yourself with that feedback.

Elise: Yeah, yeah, I think in some sense, when they work closely with you, they’re almost like a and they do know everything about you and the part where they choose to stay, they choose to come in every day is really that they see themselves in the future with and there is a fit. Right. Whether it’s not going to be perfect, but it’s a fit in terms of what they’re looking for and what the business and the mission offers.Yeah. So it’s not easy. and again, you know, I want to comment you on that. I, I, yeah, thanks for sharing all of this. I think, I think all this is super good, you know, for someone hearing, on our podcast is there anything that you would like, of share before we end the podcast?

Achitha Jacob: Oh, I feel I’ve said so much already.

Elise: It is okay if you, if you find strategy

Achitha Jacob: Yeah, I think, I think, no, I think I’ve said, said a lot of stuff. nothing is coming to mind as of now. I, I, I don’t think of myself as a particularly wise person. I see myself as a person who’s growing and learning. so I, I, I’m very hesitant to give any advice or wisdom. but always happy to share my learnings.

There is mostly learnings about myself and what I didn’t do quite right the first time around and how I’m doing differently,

Elise: Yeah, I think that is a good question to answer. So maybe I’ll ask you that and then you can respond.

Achitha Jacob: Yeah, sure.

Elise: Yeah. Yeah. So actually, You know, obviously there’s a lot of things that are going for you rather than against you. So, but I also want to kind of understand, if you were to give be given a chance to go back in time, what you would have done differently.

Achitha Jacob: Yeah. great question. I think there’s very little I would have done differently with respect to product. because We were always very. first principles, data driven in terms of how we’ve built, the product side of the company, which is our offerings and our customers and our services, what I would do very differently knowing what I know now is a lot more around people and process.

And, you know, I think In the past I’ve been very complacent around. Not wanting to have hard conversations with team members. and it’s kind of harder to do that when, when you, when you don’t have product market fit, right? you feel like there’s so many things to be improved from the revenue perspective and, the offering perspective.

Maybe I’ll just, it’s easy to focus on that and, and not have conversations with people or not. Improve processes internally. but, if I had to go back and do this again, I would have those hard conversations, even if our revenue was not growing or, nothing much to speak off, and, and not wait for the confidence of growing month on month, steady growing revenue to be able to say, I now have the authority to hold people accountable internally as well.

Closing

Elise: Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. You know,you mentioned about how, entrepreneurship is a humbling experience, but I also find you already a really humble person to start with. You know, you’re so open to hearing, learning and growing and that’s really, you know, one of the essence of being a good entrepreneur, you know, having a growth mindset and being open to what people are telling you. Considering that and making changes along the way. Yeah. So thanks so much, you know, for this amazing conversation.

Achitha Jacob: Yeah, it’s been really fun chatting. I really appreciate you having this conversation and, yeah, always, always a pleasure.

Elise: Yeah. Thank you, Achitha and all the best, you know, for all the new clinics that you’ll be I, I, one day I hope to be visiting them in person.

Achitha Jacob: Definitely would love to show you around.

Elise: Thank you.

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