Pink Lemonade a 360-degree branding and marketing solutions company. You name the requirement and they have it all. From design creation to brand positioning to website building to digital marketing, they have the perfect team for all your service needs.
We were in conversation with Tina Garg, the founder of Pink Lemonade to know about her scale-up journey. Starting as a solopreneur, she built a company of 100 employees in a span of 9 years. Tina has the first-hand experience of climbing up the entrepreneurial ladder. She shared with us, the most valuable lessons of building Pink Lemonade.
Listening to Tina’s story, three main factors stand out. The role of mentorship, training, and implementation of processes. As you read below, you will see how these aspects have shaped up her business today.
Pink Lemonade : The starting point
Tina began as a single woman army with the name ‘Tina Garg communications’ printed on her business cards. Her office was set up in the extended space available at her residence in Bengaluru. She had 7 clients just in the first year from various networking and word of mouth referrals. It was not until she joined ISB 10000 women program that she had a shift in perspective on
entrepreneurship. It was here that she learned the importance of team and her first hire came within 3 days of the program.
With a growing team, there were new projects coming up and Tina hired more people to support her. This was an interesting phase for Pink Lemonade as people from different domains were hired.
Tina believed in hiring someone with the right attitude instead of the right qualification.
Learning with the team
Hiring talent during the initial stages of the company was an advantage for Tina. The environment was so favourable for her and the team to learn together. There were no projects that were turned off. The entire team and Tina took up projects from all domains to grow their expertise. This is one of the main reasons that their work can be seen in various sectors today. Tina and her team took up newer projects with the motto, “even if we haven’t done this earlier, we will still do it now.”
Even today, Tina and her team are consistently trained and upskilled in relevant subjects. The technical team goes through advanced training programs and the top managers undergo upskilling in leadership.
Expanding Customer Base of Pink Lemonade
Tina says, having the business pipeline full of projects is a must for aiming growth. One of their earlier strategies was to take projects from multiple domains. There was no particular niche that they worked upon. Their work in different sectors contributed to having a wider customer base. Alongside cross-sector expertise, demand generation strategies with digital marketing worked in
their favour for generating leads. Tina and her team actively brainstormed ideas to create interest and add value to their potential customers.
With time and efforts, there were good results in obtaining handsome clients.
The role of mentorship
For Tina, mentorship has played a vital role in the growth of Pink Lemonade. Beginning from the ISB program to her mentorship with Goldman Sachs and her husband, every mentor has proved to be of immense help for Pink Lemonade.
Tina specifies the selfless guidance of her husband Mr. Anant Garg. It was he who visited the office often to interact with the employees and mentor them. It was also under his mentorship that Pink Lemonade brought effective workflow processes. The benefit of implementing processes was evident for Tina as it streamlined project delivery and enabled efficient utilization of the time.
Today
According to Tina, Pink Lemonade has found its ground. They deliver impeccable quality projects to their clients. They focus on upskilling their employees in leadership. Apart from this, their processes are very well defined and they have the ability to deliver projects of a larger scale. Pink Lemonade treats its employees as family. Every employee is given a pink holiday once in a
month to refresh from the monotony of work. They are other facilities like the game room and relaxing room allowing employees to take intermittent breaks to destress during work time.
On the first day of every month, we look forward to our goal-setting session with Savitha Nanjappa.
Savitha Nanjappa is a Success Coach, Founder of Success with Savitha. She has been instrumental in supporting HEN members, setting up goals, prioritizing, and increasing daily productivity.
This first of May, the session, ‘May means Money’ was another informative session on setting goals for increasing our business. This in turn, would help us in earning more money. We learned an important concept of ‘time batching’ to optimize our productivity to our best abilities.
The gist of the session – May means Money
- Savitha started by instructing us to note down 3 pointers for this statement – Write down three things that would bring in more money
- Then, she asked us to answer the questions about our struggles –
- What are you struggling with?
- Why are you struggling?
- What would you like to change?
- What is Time Batching?
Once, we noted down the answers for this, she introduced us to the concept of ‘time batching’. Time batching allows us to plan our days well in advance. It is a concept that makes you work on a single domain in the given time.
For example, if you are confused about carrying out different aspects of your business, time batching helps you in the allocation of timings for each task. Let’s say, you have web designing, content writing, marketing, networking, etc., you can choose to do specific activities on a single day.
- Monday – Web designing – 4 hours (Here, you will work only on this without worrying about other
tasks) - Tuesday – Content Writing – 3 hours (These 3 hours are dedicated only for content writing)
- Wednesday – Marketing – Full day (You will only do marketing on Wednesdays)
After explaining to about ‘time batching’, Savitha showcased her own weekly planner based on the same concept. She discussed in detail how her tasks are planned well and executed with precision. Savitha also displayed ‘time batching’ of her colleague who works only for 3 days in a week. This planner looked efficient for her work schedule.
Being Productive Together
Savitha instructed each one of us to prepare our weekly planner based on time batching. She asked us to write down how a particular day would like in a week. She asked us to execute the plan and tweak it accordingly based on what is working best for us.
Savitha then took up questions from attendees on productivity and suggested helpful pointers for reaching everyone’s May goals. A separate WhatsApp group was created by Ruche for all the attendees to share their weekly plans. On the WhatsApp platform, we can ask any questions pertaining to goal setting and increasing productivity. We can ask questions on optimizing the time batched planner. Savitha will provide her valuable insights on the plans and goals.
Note: If you have not attended the goal setting sessions yet, you can join us from the month of June. You will become part of an exclusive WhatsApp group to discuss and support each other in the journey of entrepreneurship
