[Entrepreneur At Heart] Experience Is The Biggest Teacher, and Life’s Been The Biggest School for Sejal Gulati

Having seen many startup workplaces in the past, the sight of a plush corporate office on the 7th floor of a building seemed relatively alien to me. Like judging a book by its cover, I wasn’t really sure how much of the entrepreneurial spirit I’d unearth. Afterall, it was Time Inc’s India partners, Time Analytics Services (TAS). For a company that supports the biggest names of the publishing industry, to start up in India might not sound like a big deal, but Sejal Gulati, CEO, TAS will tell you a different story.

This story of building from scratch, earning every penny by herself, making big mistakes and learning from them, h

ave been the cornerstones of Sejal’s life. And what I was seeing, in that plush corporate office, was a battle hardened woman, who exuded an entrepreneurial aura. After hearing the story of Sejal’s life, she was not very different from the 10,000-odd entrepreneurs we’ve covered so far.Sejal Gulati, is an entrepreneur at heart.

The Ivy League experiences

Sejal is an Alumnus from two Ivy League colleges - Princeton and Harvard. When asked about how she managed the high academic standards, required to get into these universities, she said: “As you can tell from my accent, I was born and raised in the US. Me and my sister are children of immigrants, which I think is both challenging and good. You really get to see the sacrifices your parents make to provide you with the opportunities that they never had and that just makes you value them a lot more. And we made the most of the opportunities that were given to us by giving it a 100% in whatever we did. And that’s what came through in academics as well.”

Sejal says that both Princeton and Harvard were very different schools. “I have a slight preference to Princeton because I did my UG in liberal arts from there. It’s a fountain of ideas - very fast paced, but mentally stimulating. You had scholars who were interested in teaching. But both, Harvard and Princeton taught me to think critically, communicate effectively and write persuasively. These have stayed with me through my professional life,” says Sejal.

Lesson number one - “When things don’t come easily, you learn”

Every student probably goes through that phase at the end of college, where the reality of finding something new hits them. And more often than not, students are not prepared for it. And Sejal was no different. She says, “Back then, a lot of my friends from UG went to law school. I basically followed the herd and applied to many law schools, only to be rejected by all. So here I was, finishing college with no offers from law school and no job. So I went back home and I was really upset about my state.”

However, Sejal considers this hardship as one of her life’s biggest learnings. She says, “When you don’t get something very easily, you learn.” She made a trip back to Princeton and went to the career services department. Now there was no Google back then, so she referred a -- published sometime in 1993 - Best Jobs for Liberal Arts Graduates, which basically listed all the relevant jobs, she could take. “I called each one of them and applied for all the job openings. I got a call from MetLife, who had an very selective 7 member management training program, of which one person had just opted out. My resume had reached them in time to fill the vacancy, and that’s how I landed my first job,” reminisces Sejal.

However, this wasn’t going to be Sejal’s first job, which also leads us to the next lesson.

Lesson two - “Work at a place which values what you bring to the table.”

As Sejal got through her time at MetLife, she started to realise a few things. “For one, I realized that I didn’t want to be a lawyer. I liked business a lot but I didn’t like MetLife. Don’t mistake me; I think MetLife is a great company, but I don’t think it was the right fit for me.”

Sejal was also in a young board of trustees at Princeton, where she rubbed shoulders with the pioneers of various industries. She learnt how a top notch university like Princeton is run. She also started talking to lot of her seniors, asking them what they’d done after college. Business school appealed the most to her, so she applied to Harvard Business School and got through.

At Harvard, Sejal says the culture is to retain the summer interns and offer them full time jobs. “I took up a consulting job in the summer and I sucked at it. And went on to create history as the only student in the batch who didn’t get an offer from their summer job company. So I went and spoke with my professor, Nitin Nohria, who’s the current dean of Harvard, to ask him what I should do about this crisis situation. And he asked me, ‘Are you surprised that you didn’t get the offer?’ and honestly, the answer was no. He then asked me, ‘When did you know that you weren’t a right fit for the job?’ and I said, ‘Like the second week.’ He then asked me ‘Then why didn’t you quit?’” Up until then, Sejal hadn’t thought of quitting as an option, but Nitin went on to ask her, ‘If you know something isn’t working, even after repeated attempts, why don’t you just quit? You can always quit!”

Sejal says she had applied to 16 jobs at the time, of which 15 were in investment banking and one was marketing. “From the 15 jobs, I got one offer and of the one marketing job I had applied for I got the offer! Data should tell you what I should have taken, but I still went with the investment banking job! Because when you’re 24, you’re an idiot! At least I was. By that, I mean, you don’t know, what you don’t know.”

With her priorities set on track, Sejal got through American Express, until the World Trade Centre attacks of September 11, required her to relocate. She says, “I did great at American Express, and that’s because of the experience I had at Harvard. Every time I’d sit for an interview, I would ask the employers - ‘What are the traits of the most successful people in your company? And how do you handle people who don’t fit in?’ More often than not, I’d know if it is a good fit for me or not.”

Sejal defines professional success based on this criterion - “If what you bring to the table matches the interest of your company, that’s success.”

Lesson three - “Always Show Up”

After the 9/11 attacks, the American Express office, which was right next to the World Trade Center was severely damaged, which required Sejal to shift job. That’s when she chose to join Time Inc, where she joined as an assistant director for Money magazine, and made her way up the ranks of the organization.

“Back in 2007, my husband, who’s in private equity, had to move back to India. So I pitched to Time Inc that I would set up operations in India. Now media industry is very traditional. Don’t get me wrong, my managers are extremely smart and amazing at what they do, but for a new country they needed a proof of concept and they had sent me here on an exploratory basis. No one handed me a bag of money and said ‘Sejal, make this work’. I built this brick-by-brick; every employee is accounted for by the main business unit and I was the only overhead.”

She recruited her VP operations, who was working with AOL, and along with her helped set up the current 70-member business unit in India, in typical startup fashion. Sejal defines the culture at TAS to be very entrepreneurial. She says, “It’s a fairly flat organization and those who succeed are entrepreneurial in nature. We mainly look for potential in people to become great leaders at the job, because we’re not going to find the guys who’ve already done what we’re expecting them to do. We allow mistakes, as long as people who made them own up to it and take the effort to not make it again.”

Sejal’s advice from her book of experiences is to give everything you do a 100%. She says, “If you’re thinking of doing something, just do it. Always show up. Also know that you can’t do everything and trying to do so will be messy. Do it one at a time and do it well.”

The advantage of being a woman

When asked if being a woman made things difficult for her in her journey, Sejal says, “Not really! I don’t have many peers, which is a nice thing. Being a woman, you’re almost constantly underestimated and that’s fine I guess. If you can put your ego aside, there is a lot that you can achieve.“

On a concluding note, Sejal finds the lack of women leaders in India very ironic. She says, “We definitely need more women who sit in my position. I’m a big fan of Kirthiga Reddy and honestly, there are so many highly qualified and able Indian women. I hope people take from this story that, married women with children, can be successful professionals, especially in India.”