We invited Shreya Patharkar, Managing Director at Lafayette Luxury Concierge for an interview with Most Popular Stories. Let’s know about her entrepreneurial journey.
1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey as an entrepreneur
I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur and build my own empire globally.
My vision started growing global when I was studying my IBDP (11th and 12th ) from Symbiosis International school, as the IB curriculum helps you to be an independent and a global thinker. Prior to that my entire schooling happened from Symbiosis school.
After completion of my 12th grade, I moved to Singapore for my further studies. In a year’s time, I moved to Australia and studied commercial law at Macquarie University. While studying in the university, I used to pick up part-time work, just to gain exposure and experience in all fields. From that time I knew my interest was in Luxury after working in multiple luxury retail stores.
When I was back from Australia I was thinking about what to do, either study more or start something on my own. Finally, I decided upon taking up Image consulting and personal shopping courses in ICBI India and Consell Institute of Image Management – USA. Post my return from the states I decided to move to Dubai – the land of luxury as we call it, to pursue my career. While working as an image consultant in the UAE, I worked with a diverse clientele, ranging from celebrated Emiratis to business families of the country. One such family is the illustrious Datar Family, the owners of Al Adil Group Dubai. “I got inspired by Mr. and Mrs.Datar’s work ethics, and I managed to incorporate those in my professional charisma.”
At the same time, I studied Luxury Brand Management from FAD Dubai and that’s when the idea of establishing Lafayette hit me. And here I am today!
2. Why did you choose entrepreneurship over a job?
I chose entrepreneurship because I always believed that I have the capability and the ability to bring about a change in this world. I have always been intrigued by entrepreneurship as my family has a jewelry business background, and since childhood, I used to look up to my father as a smart, creative, and strong businessman. My parents have been a strong pillar in my decision making to be an entrepreneur. They believed in me and always motivated me to be one.
We all have that one passion in life, and my passion was everything that is luxury, call it luxury travel, luxury fashion, luxury fine dining, etc. . In fact, the best life has the offer.
Besides passion, I realized I love taking up challenges and re-inventing myself every day. I can never lead a monotonous life. And here I get to work on different sectors in luxury, every day is a new experience, every day I get an opportunity to learn something new, and this urge to re-invent myself and my passion keep me going that extra mile and makes me proud to have taken the decision to be an entrepreneur.
3. What was the vision behind it?
The scope of luxury in India is vast My vision behind starting Lafayette Luxury was to expose the people of India to luxury living along with saving their time by allowing them to delegate all their work to us, so they can only focus on their growth.
4. Describe the services that you offer to your customers and in what way they are unique?
Lafayette is a luxury concierge firm, taking care of the lifestyles of the HNI’s and UHNI’s. We all have 24 hours in a day. It is rightly said that time is the only asset we have. In that limited time, we need to take care of our career, our dreams, ambitions, family, ourselves, etc. So much to do in such a limited time!
Exactly here we come in, we let our clients have the leisure and luxury of time for the things that matter the most to them while they dedicate all their lifestyle handling work to us. From finding house help, dog walkers, errand running to planning out your perfect luxury vacation, reservations at your favorite Michelin Starred restaurant and even helping you buy a new property or a car.
We do it all . Time is our value proposition!
5. What difficulties which you have faced or you are facing?
Well, difficulties are faced by all businesses. Initially the major difficulty I faced as an entrepreneur was to make people aware of the concept. Concierge is a very new concept in India and not many people know it. They used to perceive concierge as any other travel company first, it took a lot of concept awareness to actually educate the people on how a concierge really works and to imbibe in them that having a concierge for yourself is luxury.
As an organization, we still do face the same issue, but we have strategies in place now to spread the concept awareness in the right way.
6. How do you handle the pressure and manage stress?
I believe that when you love your work, it’s not pressure that you face, it’s the challenge to do better every day. Handling challenges comes with doing your best and giving your best with a calm and positive attitude.
Stress is something that comes naturally when you are running an organization. It is something you have to at first accept, and find solutions by practicing mindfulness or whatever relaxes you. The truth is if you cannot handle stress, you will never be able to handle success.
7. How do you market your business?
Marketing and reaching out to the right audience is the most important aspect and the core element to make any business successful. With the growth and boom in the scope of social media nowadays reaching out to these audiences has become very efficient and easy. However different business modules require different marketing strategies depending upon the target audience.
Lafayette being in the Luxury sector, we have to be very careful on maintaining the brand positioning and brand value. So mass is not for us.
We use Influencers from the luxury sectors, media and the best that works for us is word of mouth. Since our product is intangible hearing the first-hand experience from an individual really helps us to get the right audience.
8. How many hours a day do you work on average & can you describe/outline your typical day?
I do not have fixed hours of working as such. It completely depends on the workload. I do not believe in having a monotonous life. However, I am constantly reading and researching on growing my brand.
My day starts early in the morning at 5.30 am with 30 minutes of meditation followed by fitness and then my reading. I start work at 10.00 am and by 5.00 pm I am pretty much done. As networking is very important for my business module, I have to socialize a lot and build connections. Hence my most evenings or even lunch are out. But I make sure I spend an hour or 2 with my parents before going to bed.
9. In your opinion what are the keys to success?
Staying focused and consistent are the two elements that keep you going. Success requires taking calculative risks, not fearing failures, accepting criticisms, a lot of learning and experiences, and self-motivation.
Success is not a destination, with every small step ahead in your life you are one on the ladder of success. Learning a new skill, gaining knowledge, self-growth is a success too. It has no end.
10. What advice would you give to someone starting out as an aspiring entrepreneur?
Take risks, face challenges! You will fail initially. But do not give up.
Remember failures are only and only the building blocks of success. Without failure, there is no success.
Connect Here,
Website: https://www.lafayetteluxury.club/