The trend of e-commerce has increased rapidly in recent years with the development of accessibility of internet usage. Easy access to the internet has driven consumers to shop online books, airline tickets/reservations, clothing/shoes videos/games, and other electronic products.
We live in a world increasingly driven by e-commerce, it’s present in almost all walks of life, from booking train tickets to ordering dinner. However, why is ecommerce important for any business?
For entrepreneurs’ e-commerce is the golden opportunity to make their business powerful and successful. With the new emerging technologies, and increasing awareness about digitalization, a business leader must invest in e-commerce development so that they can survive in today’s competitive market. This is where Newgen e-commerce agency comes into the picture.
Established by an exemplary leader Nivetha Muralidharan, Founder, Newgen, through a solution (Newgen Max) is guiding many aspiring entrepreneurs to scale and expand their offline business with success rate touching greater heights.
Nivetha also oversees an academy known as Nivetha E-academy.
The academy has multiple mentors, and they help people to commence their journey in the world of entrepreneurship, Nivetha E-academy is an exclusive benchmark to learn and comprehend skills in e-commerce business.
In an interview with Insights Success, Nivetha sheds light on her journey highlighting the USPs, values, and fundamentals of Newgen in the e-commerce niche.
Nivetha, what was your inspiration behind venturing into the industry?
My career was initiated as an e-commerce seller. I was working in cognizant technology solutions, and I always had a dream of entering the business world, I never thought of quitting my job, so I parallelly started one business that does E-commerce selling on marketplaces like Amazon, Flipkart etc.
At some point in my life, I was facing problems where it seemed like there is no outcome, nor any solution. My father was having a hard time, I had an accident, and it was the moment when I was about to get married.
Moreover, I was going through financial problems. Life can get hard at times.
However, I started my entrepreneur journey as a freelancer and then scale it into my agency, so I started Newgen in 2017.
From 2013 I sold products offline and online as well. Just like things begin with a spark, I started as a freelancer and then slowly, I developed an agency in 2017, ‘Newgen,’ and started providing services to a greater extent.
Newgen Max is our digital solution where we provide multiple services to our clients in E-commerce. We are currently helping coaches to scale their business and we are ensuring a steady shift of their business from offline to online.
In case they are into an online business, we help them to expand their services and their business.
Apart from this, I oversee operations in my academy known as Nivetha E-academy, where we guide people to initialize their e-commerce business. We have multiple mentors, and we help people to commence their journey in the world of entrepreneurship, Nivetha E-academy is an exclusive benchmark to learn and comprehend skills in e-commerce business.
What are the initial challenges you face to venturing into the respect to the industry?
The journey from selling products to becoming an agency was definitely challenging. I was selling my products; however, I was not able to scale up the operations beyond one point. That’s the reason I decided to initiate Newgen.
Because of my personal and financial issues, the challenges that I faced were mainly about how to scale my operations to receive orders and fulfil the demands of my clients.
A shift from being a freelancer to an agency was proximately hard for me because once I start working as an agency, I was concerned about new employees.
I always believe that paying my freelancers or TEAM members on time is one of the very important factors because eventually, money is crucial. As a result, I must pay a promising amount to my employees.
There was a time when I got very few clients, and it was not a great deal from a financial perspective. While scaling the operations of my agency, I was not able to hire employees with an approximate payment.
Another thing was team formation. When I experienced a steady shift in the business, with financial stability, I decided to hire employees. Though I was not well exposed to hiring reason why I was not able to rectify, ‘how to bring these key factors into a protocol.’ I started hiring people remotely, but it was a setback for success.
Back in the days when I had a physical office, I was not able to push my employees towards working. Hiring was one of the major challenges that I faced during my process.
What are the USPs that highlight your brand or company uniqueness so in the industry?
People call us transparent. We don’t blindly provide projections without understanding the fundamentals.
Sometimes reality can do wonders and from a business perspective, we assure our clients that we are going to try this and work on it because we believe in transparency. So, this is the primary thing that we follow, another USP is that we don’t stick on to one particular platform. We never stick to the same business plan and say that, okay if you’re an online seller, we suggest that if you’re selling on Amazon or Flipkart just try to build your own website just make sure that we’re working on Instagram influencers.
We ensure providing end-to-end solutions unlike other agencies in India. Their work will be on Facebook ads. When they’re focusing on Facebook ads, we try to connect people by fulfilling their requirements like you have a business.
So, that is why I feel that we are a little unique with the professional values and qualities we follow. I expect a time of my team members and my clients to follow this thing as crucial factor for an agency owner.
For example, issues will arise everywhere, for an agency owner, if there is an issue, we request our clients to have some patients and we are here to help— Newgen wants to develop the trust factor with its clients through remarkable actions and quality services
There are times when we work on Sunday, I won’t say no to my work, but still, it is again a reality check that, it doesn’t mean that you know we will be available for everyone 24/7. I always respect my team members, my family, and my clients.
Sometimes keeping everyone happy is the choice we make, which remains beneficial for everyone.
As an experienced professional what would you like to advise to the budding aspirants?
Initiate your journey with hustle, the important thing is to initialize the journey towards being successful. Many people fail because they cannot or don’t want to get started.
Every time you try something that will be a failure, I have been a lot of time in my journey, had I used to call my journey a roller coaster ride. There are many ups and downs, I try to overcome the failure with my efforts towards success.
I had a mesmerising experience one day with an incident; however, I learnt the lesson and since then I try to double up my revenue every time. People might think that they will immediately start making money just after entering the business world. Just make sure that it is going to be a roller coaster ride.
So, it’s going to be a well-known start that you would have lots of unplanned things happening to be ready to face it as a leader, you will get success.
How do you envision your company’s operations eventually concerning the challenging scenario of your initial post-pandemic?
Post-COVID, my remote team got stronger and currently, we don’t face any issues in remote operations but yes, maybe down the line, we will again restart our offline office, etc.
We believe that we will be soon expanding and as a result, we have team members, clients, from India, but in the long run, I want these members to be available worldwide and working remotely.
I support remote working one because of one crucial aspect-we can work and take care of our family altogether. I support it because it is really important that we have to balance work and life. My team members are women with responsibilities of their children and with the remote working model, they are maintaining the work life balance.
Many women in India are getting married and post-marriage and they are not able to continue a job it’s all because they have to take care of their baby, they have to travel etc. But now, this pandemic situation has helped many such women to work from home and take care of their family.
