This woman entrepreneur’s edtech startup is designing unique courses for women consumers
Delhi-based serial entrepreneur Shikha Mittal’s latest venture is an edtech platform called Be Your Own Shakti, which offers women-centric courses such as how to deal with domestic violence, sexual harassment, and financial literacy, among others.
After building an awareness enterprise with for over a decade, Delhi-based entrepreneur Shikha Mittal has forayed into the burgeoning edtech market in India.
Launched early this month, Be Your Own Shakti is an edtech platform. It aims to offer unique courses, including financial literacy course for women called Be Your Own Lakshmi as well as courses on other topics such as sexual harassment, domestic violence, and emotional intelligence.
While the venture might have begun recently, the founder says, she has been offering the financial literacy course live online for the past year and has a community of over 400 women by the time the edtech platform was launched.
While its network of learners connects solely via WhatsApp groups, it hopes to work on a separate edtech and networking app for Be Your Own Shakti in the next year.
The long journey to entrepreneurship
Be Your Own Shakti comes after a decade-long, and unexpected, journey of the entrepreneur.
Growing up in Delhi, Shikha pursued a Bachelors degree in history from Delhi University and stepped into the corporate world. The idea of entering entrepreneurship, back then, was never on the founder’s radar.
Shikha says she faced several issues during her corporate career. She had to change eight workplaces in the seven years of working at various media and event management companies due to sexual harassment. When she sought help, the common advice was to learn to deal with reality. “Aisa hi hota hain. (That is the way it is),” she was advised.
“I think I was broken from my emotion to an extent that I felt numb and did not know what to do because everything around me looked absolutely unreal to me,” she tells HerStory.
With time, “I felt like I don't want to die leaving this world how I got it. I may be only a drop in the ocean but I wanted to leave this world a bit better.”
(Representative image)
The turning point
In 2010, Shikha embarked on her first entrepreneurial venture with Be.cause in a bid to engage the youth of developing countries art, design and cultural exchange for long-term change. The initiative shut down within eight months.
“It was a not-for-profit venture and I was absolutely naive on the entire financial requirements to do something. I learnt that if I have to bring art to be commercially viable to bring that social change, it has to be self-sustaining,” she recalls the lessons from her first step in entrepreneurship.
In the same year, she conceptualised and started Be.artsy, a for-profit social venture that provides B2B (business-to-business) service in awareness. The startup provides educational and awareness sessions in the form of theatrical performances.
She further explains, "Whether it is a service on prevention of sexual harassment, bias training, or diversity and inclusion or financial literacy, every element that we offer to the corporate should add value in the employee's day to day health, be it financial, emotional and social health. As a result, they will be able to perform better."
In the last 11 years of operation, it has developed a network of over 800 artists across regions of India. This access to talent across 14 regional languages allows Be.artsy to quickly provide service whenever there is an awareness programme needed.
After identifying artists who are paid per project, Be.artsy’s operation team travels a week or so ahead to the location, designs the play based on the awareness programme needed and delivers the service.
COVID-19 and other challenges
When asked about the initial investment, “Shikha Mittal and her time,” pat comes the reply from the founder, “I started with zero, nothing. I designed communications, went to the corporate companies.” However, most corporate would think of Be.artsy as a non-profit organisation.
To differentiate itself as a for-profit company, Shikha made business proposition of their service to more than 6,000 companies so far but has bagged 265 clients. This includes the likes of PepsiCo, International Labour Organisation, Haryana Government, National Stock Exchange (NSE), Air India, American Express, Airtel, Tata Motors, Pepsico India, Asian Paints, Tata Coffee, Infosys, and PwC.
Operating with a core team of 18 people in Delhi, Be.artsy clocks an annual revenue of Rs 2 Crore.
When COVID-19 struck in March 2020, it pivoted to working on the webinar model by offering live and creating video-based programmes.
Soon it delved on the B2C (business-to-consumer) model by offering courses directly to users, and the entrepreneur is now building the edtech platform, Be Your Own Shakti based on the success of her pilot programmes for the past year.
Edited by Affirunisa Kankudti