Have confidence in your brand and stay authentic: Priyanka Gill's advice to entrepreneurs

Priyanka Gill, Venture Partner, Kalaari Capital, and Group Co-founder of Good Glamm Group, urged entrepreneurs to have confidence in their brand and its growth arc, and stay authentic to it.

“You must ask yourself: why I am building this brand, who I am building it for, and how this offering will add value to customers in a way that would differentiate me from the others," said Gill at SheSparks 2024 in Bengaluru.

In a fireside chat with Rekha Balakrishnan, Lead Editor of HerStory and SocialStory, Gill spoke at length about the power of using a data-centric approach to build a brand and scale it. Brands must be disciplined in tracking data on a regular basis, she said.

“It’s important for them to not be deluded by vanity metrics and consider the real metrics that push the needle for them. It is important to be honest about these observations to your investors as well, as scaling is a long-term exercise that needs foresight,” she added.

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Gill also spoke about the evolution of influencer marketing over the years. She said that back in 2017 when she sat down with brands to talk about Plixxo, an influencer marketing platform, they didn’t know what influencer marketing meant.

“They hadn’t been introduced to the prospects of credible marketing channels and how much money they could make,” she said.

Gill, who is the founding board member of CXXO—Kalaari Capital’s initiative to support women-led businesses—said she saw girls as young as 17 and 18 join the influencer marketing platform and grow in confidence to expand their presence and reach.

Plixxo, powered by POPxo, a digital community platform for millennial women, was launched 13 years ago. Today, it has over 26,000 verified influencers and bloggers.

In 2017, POPxo was named in the Unilever Foundry30 Southeast Asia and Australasia community, a list of the 30 most ambitious startups and scaleups in the region. In 2020, POPxo was acquired by MyGlamm, an online makeup brand part of the Good Glamm Group, a content-to-commerce beauty and personal care conglomerate.

Gill also noted that gender-based disparity in organisations was a reality. Finding allies and making the organisation inclusive and empathetic was a step towards course-correcting this disparity, she said.

On a closing note, Gill urged women entrepreneurs not to give up and take care of themselves.

“During the pandemic, many of our investors backed out, we had 200 employees and no money. But we always thought of strategies to get back on our feet,” she said.

“As you do this, take care of yourself, allot time for your physical and mental health, and build relationships based on trust.”