Interview With Shrijay Sheth | LegalWiz.in
About Shrijay Sheth and LegalWiz.in
Shrijay Sheth is an eCommerce and Digital Commerce veteran with over 10 years of experience and three ventures to his name. MBA (Corporate Finance) at San Diego, California refers to his Alma matters. He started his career in corporate Finance and Accounting, and later moved to Analytics and Strategy. Though, he currently focuses on eCommerce and Digital Commerce. His extensive experience includes working with hyper-growing tech companies in California, like Qualcomm, LegalZoom.com, Bouqs.com, and MeUndies.com. His expertise lies in building subscription based businesses. He is firm believer of the ‘people first’ philosophy, and nurturing the ‘customer centric’ approach.
Being a startup evangelist, he contributes and participates in the Startup driven initiatives by speaking at various Startup events hosted by Headstart, PayU, eChai, CIIE at IIM-Ahmedabad, and has been a mentor at Google backed StartUp Weekend events. He is best known for his people skills, analytical approach, business acumen, and can-do attitude.
He currently runs LegalWiz.in – a LegalTech company that help startups and SMEs with business professional services and daily legal compliances. As of today, Legalwiz.in supports 3,000+ clients across India and claims some of the most prominent startups in Gujarat as their clients. He heads an another venture, Hire4Higher Consulting – a niche data analytics and consulting firm providing consultancy services to build data-driven infrastructure for growing eCommerce companies in the US. Also, provides growth consulting to conventional businesses with generational legacy in India to grow eCommerce as a revenue channel.
Links
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/legalwiz.in/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LegalWiz.in/
Website: www.legalwiz.in
1.What gets you out of bed in the morning i.e what’s your source of motivation?
As an entrepreneur for profits, my motivation is always the possibility of making LegalWiz. a national brand for procuring business professional services. It surely means economic gains for everyone associated with the company, but it is also a large impact on how small businesses consider importance of legal hygiene and compliance in our country.
2. Why should people choose your product/services?
Small businesses and startups are often put to risk of non-compliance or become victims of legal consequences because they keep themselves away from maintaining basic legal hygiene. This is mostly due to lack of availability of quality resources at affordable price. At LegalWiz.in, we are laser focused on creating value for our clients – making it Simple, Affordable, and Transparent. Our services are best suited for early stage startups and small businesses owners who would want to procure high quality compliance services at affordable rates and with highest transparency on deliverable. We take care of the back office and compliance work, so that our clients can focus on what matters the most for their business.
3. What’s your competitive advantage and why can’t it be copied?
The Team of professionals at LegalWiz.in strives to provide the highest quality services. With highly customer centric service approach and technology built to scale, we are able to grow with strong word-of-mouth branding. It enables us to keep low acquisition costs. Reducing operational costs per fulfillment at scale are passed on to our clients for even better pricing without compromising on quality. While there are several other portals functional in same domain, we keep our prominent positioning with keeping ourselves highly approachable and staying away from the cookie cutter approach. May it be New Company Registration or protecting IP through trademark registration, our team is highly skilled and willing to help you with your queries.
4. What risks are you facing?
There are several players entering this market with simple websites and typically with a specific regional reach, who are willing to provide cheaper services. This is a short-term threat. However, there is definitely an advantage that we carry with right set of processes and technology in place, which created a greater value for our clients and help us retain them for longer.
5. Have you considered any alliance/partnership?
Yes. Partnerships are critical to our business model to get national reach. However, we are very cautious with building affiliates network. It is a closely knit and fully vetted network of a selected few, who meet our service standards and beyond at all time. Network consists of Chartered Accountants, Company Secretaries, and Tax Consultants, and other business professionals.
6. What are your cash flow projections? When will you break even? How much will you need in investments?
We are operationally breaking even, and a strong repeat purchase rate keeps our cash-flows at a decent place. Having said that, there are significant expenses that we make to acquire new customers and building tech stack. We are bootstrapped at present.
7. What comes first for you money or emotions?
Business owners are morally tasked with the trusteeship of all the employees, partners, and stakeholders associated with the business. Startup entrepreneurship is an emotional journey, almost like a roller-coaster with highs and lows. All having said, objective to make money can’t be ignored, that is the only way you can keep the company progressive and yourself motivated.
8. What are your strengths and weaknesses?
People are surely the strength. We have fortunately been able to assemble a team that is self-disciplined and motivated to keep clients’ interest as their priority. Apart from that, my past experience within digital commerce industry and exposure to mature international markets have helped in avoiding initial learning curve, and hit the grounds running. We haven’t been able to grab the GST opportunity and that is surely a weakness that we carry. However, things are brought back to shape quickly and we are growing at a good pace.
9. Tell me about an accomplishment you are most proud of.
We claim unfiltered customer ratings of 9.5/10 for all 2+ years of our being operationally functional. Customers stay happy and speak highly of our services within their network. Being able to build a company that is highly people centric is what I consider to be an achievement. Sustained growth or recognition from media or institutions are a great outcome of this.
10. How do you handle pressure?
It is mostly about how we take it. You have to make yourself learn to keep calm, and take unbiased decisions. Pressure, in moderation, is good in a way that it makes you agile and efficient. It is like energy that brings you in action, either constructive or destructive – you have choice to channel it in right direction. I try to keep my work related pressure at workplace, so that I can freely enjoy with family and friends. That is enough to get me ready for next day’s work – one day at a time! Having said that, if you enjoy and believe in what you do, it makes it easier to deal with work related pressure.
11. If you sold your company today, what would be the tone of the conversation? What would you want to gain? What would you want to avoid losing?
It is not a commodity, that can be freely traded. There might come a time when I would think of passing on ownership, but that would be the day when I would truly believe that the future of the company at large is better under different management. Many entrepreneurs startup with a hope to be acquired or sold-off. It almost feels like raising an animal just to get slaughtered at some point. This doesn’t sound right. Also, honestly, the business still needs to be big enough to be worthy of selling off.
12. What advice would you give to someone starting out?
Gain some experience through internships or working for someone else, before starting up. One skill that you will make you successful in business is your ability to work with people. It is difficult to figure that until you have worked for someone. Apart from that, keep faith in your efforts and learn to fail fast. Only strength that a startup has over big businesses is the ability to pivot quickly and survive.
13. How do you plan to retain talent from moving out for better opportunities?
It is important for any business to retain it’s core team, that is the one typically willing to burn mid-night oil and resolve issues by taking ownership. For the company to become client centric, it is important that the management to remain employee centric. We try to build policies that provide everyone an equal opportunity to grow within the company. Talent needs a reward, acknowledgement, and transition. This is what I have learnt in my 10 years of career as an employee and consultant, before turning into an entrepreneur. My thoughts are summarized in a blog that I recently published, and most of them practiced at LegalWiz.in for employee retention.
