Interview with Shruti Kushwah | Crealoons Design & FountainHead Design Studio
I hope this can inspire you to become a successful entrepreneur too! Why is it important to hear the story of a successful entrepreneur?
Having the vision to become an entrepreneur is great. Making it happen is another story!
In that frame, I had the pleasure to interview Shruti Kushwah, founder of Crealoons Design, CEO & co-founder of FountainHead Design Studio. Crealoons Innovation is a complete product development company with operations in India with Manufacturing assistance from China too. They also have a marketing office office in US. Crealoons specialize in embedded software, product prototype, Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud connectivity. Crealoons have developed innovations in consumer electronics (Kitchen appliances, wearables and smart gadgets), Healthcare Diagnostic devices and Environmental sensors & systems. FountainHead is one single studio for all kinds of IP Creation. They create IP through design, technology & science to give to the world.
1. What gets you out of bed in the morning i.e what’s your source of motivation?
When I started, there was a constant seeker in me, who was seeking to create my own path, there was a lost feeling which made me up in the morning to find the right path to the journey I was supposed to walk. Gradually and after a lot of business model arrangements, failures, experiences & explorations, I found what I was meant for & it kinda completed me within. I explored my inner strength of Creation, through a long journey from being a lab scientist to the marketer in pharmaceuticals & finding the perfect synchrony between Science & Design. Once I started the journey, every day was special & exciting. It is the same feeling when a parent sees the child & is motivated to work every single day. I got the exact feeling when I started formulating our Product Development company. New challenges, inquiries, teams, scarcity of resources everything pushed me every single morning. To sum up, before I started it was a feeling of being lost in the perceivably accomplished world but now it is the problems, solutions & growth which keeps me going. The trust of my friends, family, clients & people is a very important factor to keep me motivated.
2. What is so special about your company?
Value Creation is the fundamental quality for us & it is very precious to me. Building a ship for someone else to sail & win the world is what makes us special. The world is moving towards innovations, your customers & competitors are extremely dynamic. People come to us when their tech-enabled competitors are sweeping the business, or to get an advantage over others. we enable innovations by bringing a market competency to companies & enterprises. We want to keep building those innovations at the back & bring more power to clients.
3. What do you think about competitive advantage in business, is it important for growth?
As far as our business model is considered, we do not believe in competitive advantages, we just believe in doing the best by understanding the needs of our clients. There are others who can do too, & everyone will have a different approach. It’s like a marriage, you might like to spend time with someone & marry someone. Business is also like that. There are people who like our approach & would want to work with us someday & there are people we are already married too 😉 (those are our clients). Every product & every service is unique even if technically it has the same features. There are a lot of businesses where competitive advantage becomes very important to have a strong positioning in the market.
As far as being copied is considered, We live in a world where everything is copiable & I think everything should at one point, what’s the point of making the world better when only one can do alone. There is no fun if you cannot inspire someone else to do the same what you do. Since we are more a service-based company, every client is unique to us. We are also building our Innovation inventory to sell IP in the form of innovations, FountainHead Design Studio & we strongly believe in giving others what we have & what we have learnt. Competency is the least we are bothered about.
4. What are some of the hurdles involved in growth as per you?
For our company, We are still on the path of sensitizing companies about our service, since it is not very prominently known. It takes a lot of time for us to make them understand that an investment in innovating their product can bring them extremely well long term growth. We are very blessed in terms of other resources.
For other Entrepreneurs, I would guess it is either resources or the correct mentorship which restricts the growth mindset to move forward & deal with problems.
5. Do you create any alliance/partnership?
We do create partnerships with Manufacturing units, software companies working on embedded solutions. We also become Benefit partners to accelerator centres, startup incubation cells & universities. With large corporates & mid-size companies, we become innovation partners.
6. What comes first for you money or emotions?
Both of course!:) I would say, invest your emotions like your finances but never be emotional with your finances. Money is just a commodity & absence or presence of money does make you bring closer to who your actual people are. While running a business, it is very important to have a positive cash flow & overlook your emotions sometimes because, in the end, it is not a charity. (Until someone is involved in charity work). Specifically, for women entrepreneurs, we overlook the money portion because, for a majority of them, money is either funded by life partners or family & as a woman, they become very attached to the process & people. It is quite natural too. I advise all women entrepreneurs to focus on more wealth generation, we have given enough values to the world already. Only when you will focus on both equally, you will get that place what we are fighting for years.
7. What are your strengths and weaknesses?
My emotions are both my strength & weakness. Strength to fight adversities & problems & weak with people who have my heart!
8. Tell me about an accomplishment you are most proud of.
There is no one thing which I can share. More than myself, the love of my people, the trust of my friends and family, the small motivations someone gets through me, all together makes me proud every single day. Howard Schulz, CEO, Starbucks said once, Success isn’t a one-day thing, its an everyday accomplishment, you loose that achievement every day to gain that the next day
9. How do you handle the pressure?
By never having one! I have programmed my mind and body through vigorous learning & awakening. Nothing pressurizes me. Once you absorb this fact, that there is always something better behind anything happened, you start making an unusual peace within.
10. 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?
I think we do not want to sell as of now. It is not the right state for us. Someday we would want to become an innovation cell to a great company. That day we would want to keep the people who made us stand there, leaders who inspired us & bring back people we lost in the journey for a bigger motive.
11. What advice would you give to someone starting out?
Start now, test yourself, keep exploring, keep moving & fail fast. Thinking & Analysing will not lead you anywhere as every idea looks brilliant on paper until you put out to test by getting paid customers, running a small pilot & maybe then dropping that to find a bigger purpose. Once you get into the skin, nothing will excite you but to keep moving.
12. What’s the one question you were expecting most and I haven’t asked you?
I don’t think there is any question I would want you to ask, I thank your team to reach out to me to share my story with others.
