Interviewed & written by Jasmin Thankachen
Shobha Tummala, Founder & Creative Director
Shobha SoHo & Shobha Madison, New York City
Walking into Shobha SoHo I’m entranced by aromatic fragrances of the old country, my country of origin, India. I see many welcoming faces and hear a faint track playing an old Hindi song that I know my parents would reminisce about. The wind blows through the sheer red curtains that are hanging off a beautiful balcony, overlooking a busy Manhattan street, and yet the ambiance inside is not of the hustle and bustle that the city has to offer, but of comfort. A sense of peace washes over me as I wait my turn to be put under the guise of experts who will use the ancient art of threading to, as Shobha Tummala says, “Give [me] an instant facelift.”
It’s hard to imagine that the creator of such a space holds an electrical engineering degree, an MBA from Harvard University, and has worked in the corporate world with such prestigious companies as Procter & Gamble and Bain & Company. Unafraid of getting her hands dirty, Shobha told me later on, that she was the one who even figured out much of the electrical wiring in her salon. Shobha is no stranger to hard work and states that, “To build a company you will do anything and you will do everything,” from taking out the garbage, to wiring, to conducting market research for the product that you are promoting.
A native of Michigan, Shobha’s influences in building her business are two-fold. After having visited her grandmother in Hyderabad every summer, she learned the art of beauty and eyebrow shaping through the natural products and services that were used in Indian households. When coming back to the states, Shobha wanted to emulate that feeling of beauty and naturalness. However, after visiting many salons she never really found a place that offered superior services along with great customer interaction. Soon an idea had sparked; to combine what Shobha thought was the only and natural way of beauty with proper customer service, and a convenience that provided this service in her own backyard. Hence Shobha SoHo and Shobha Madison were created, “tying the traditions of India together with great customer service, while creating a culture for the company that is exotic yet familiar” to its clients.
“Believe in yourself…believe that you can make it happen.” - Shobha
To develop this idea of owning her own business, Shobha pulled on the strengths of two of her former colleagues and friends, Dan Kaufman and Jason Priest, both “serial entrepreneurs.” After having worked with them at Dash.com, an Internet start-up company, Shobha acquired the tools to build her own business and learned to persevere, while being her own driving force. “I saw what they [Dan and Jason] could build, how they took one idea and went after it and just did it,” says Shobha of the two. Based on her own entrepreneurial path, Shobha advises those starting their own business to first work and gain experience at a small start-up company. She believes that this is the best place to learn from others in the way that they achieve their success, while also gaining the proper tools to market, produce, and sell your own ideas.
Shobha first opened her salon in trendy SoHo after completing research on the hair removal and beauty market first, in the United States, then New York, in Manhattan, and finally in SoHo itself. With her passion and drive to bring her ideas of threading and natural beauty products to fruition, she says that the one thing that helped her to establish her business was her conviction in her own idea. She thinks that for any businessperson to achieve success s/he must “…believe in their product and idea 100% and be able to accept constructive criticism” as she has done with her products, services and salons.
Through the early stages of her career, Shobha encountered many struggles in building her own business, but notes that the biggest challenge was to go solo within such an unstructured process. Shobha found it difficult to deal with the everyday tasks of the business itself, often feeling like she was wasting valuable time doing such simple work when she wanted to be thinking about the future of her company. However, “I knew that these things needed to be done as well and once I had help, it became a lot easier. Now I have time to think about my employees and the future of the business itself.” Looking back, Shobha recommends, “people be involved in all the tasks of their business, at least in the beginning, to better understand the processes of their company.”
“Assume success and not failure.” - Shobha
This help that she speaks of was due, in part, to the networking base that she created in the early stages of her business development. Meeting people from various backgrounds enabled her to hear about other people’s experiences and advice, while allowing her to share her own thoughts. “I needed support from other entrepreneurs and a lot more validation and this network gave it to me. It was also a great place to brainstorm and fix each other’s problems.” Shobha’s thought on building a network is to have a broad-based one, “Know everyone and tap into your network to gather information. You can learn so much from other people’s experiences.”
Networking with various people has led Shobha to join organizations that have helped her in her business. Describing these professional organizations as an inverted pyramid, the larger ones being the base of the triangle, used to discuss broader issues, and then working its way down to more specific ones. Shobha says that the South Asian Women’s Leadership Forum (SAWLF) is geared toward a specific group of people that she can relate to on more than a business level. Because of a common culture, she is able to build a relationship with them on a more personal level. “Organizations like this [SAWLF] are great. You can bond with other people about specific issues that you can only relate to and are familiar with. Networks like this help to give emotional support and guidance” to many people.
So what keeps her motivated, you ask? “It was never really the money. It was the success of achieving something that I believed in. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else and it was all worth it.” What keeps Shobha involved in her salons everyday now is also the employees that she works with. She calls her team a “family” and treats each person as just that, a member of the family. Shobha wants to give her employees the benefits of working in a pleasant, friendly, environment, with promises to move laterally within the company. Playing many roles in her place of work she serves as a role model, motivator, and mentor to many in her team. Commenting on it, Shobha asserts, "[it] serves as a challenge to me, but seeing people grow is very rewarding.”
Today Shobha sees her company as having, “…a personality, everything I have envisioned, and more.” Shobha’s passion for business, beauty, and customer service has resoundingly brought her happiness, apparent in the joy and smile that you see on her face from ear to ear. We end our interview with how she feels about her newfound success and all her accomplishments. Simply put, Shobha says, “When I get out of the subway [to come here to Shobha SoHo], I really feel like I am at home and that’s what matters most.”
For information on Shobha SoHo & Shobha Madison services, visit: www.shobhathreading.com
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