113 rejections, sexism, armed extortionists. That wasn’t all she braved as an entrepreneur

Photo credit:Horia Varlan

“Jai Mata di! [Praise the lord.] Pass me the ammo.” There were three burly, six-foot tall men outside her room stuffing guns into their pockets. Nidhi Agarwal had just moved into her office in Gurgaon and was alone unwrapping furniture.

A chill ran down her spine as the movement outside caught her eye. This wasn’t the time to let fear freeze her. “What are my options?” she thought. Nothing came to mind.

The gun-toting trio barged in, took a long look at her. “Baby, where’s your papa?” they asked, towering over her small frame.

“There’s no papa,” she said.

“Husband?”

“No husband. You have to talk to me,” she answered, blinking to hide the anxiety threatening to well up in her eyes.

“Mata ka bhandar hai. Dus dubbey ghee chahiye. [We are collecting money for the temple. We want you to sponsor 10 cans of clarified butter.]” That was bizarre. But the moment she heard the demand, her business skills kicked in and a semblance of calm returned to her. “How much does a can cost?” she asked.

“5,000 rupees.” So the demand was INR 50,000 (US$755). That’s a lot of money to spare for a young, bootstrapped startup which just got its first office. So Nidhi negotiated hard, brought it down to INR 10,000 (US$150), and ushered them out of the office quickly.

“My priority was to get them out of the office as fast as possible because they were armed. Anyone from my team might come in and fall in harm’s way, I was afraid of that,” Nidhi recalls, sitting comfortably across me at an open-air restaurant in Bangalore. It was a tranquil afternoon – warm coffee, cool breeze, some Bach playing in the background. A perfect time to tell stories one lived through.

I was playing the prying journalist but Nidhi would rather talk about her startup, Kaaryah – a niche estore for women’s formal western wear. In the 18 months since she founded Kaaryah, Nidhi has seen goons and worse. Now, there’s an air of nonchalance around her, much like a seasoned entrepreneur.

A spilt cup of coffee

Nidhi was a strategy director with American conglomerate Honeywell when she chanced upon the idea of Kaaryah.

The Kaaryah differentiator

No, no, no … and the big yes, which came at the 114th try