Buy, baby, buy

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She started in 2009 with a small office space with about 20-odd employees. Today, she has a two-storey office in a posh South Delhi locality with 130 members of staff. The success story of the online e-commerce site, mydala.com, a daily deals site, is there for all to see. This is a pioneer website in the country in the concept of discount group buying and the brain behind it is Anisha Singh, a 30-something entrepreneur.
An average student, she says she came into her own when she was doing her post-graduation in the US. “I took an elective in Information Systems and was hooked,” she recounts. After a couple of stints, spent working in the US, Anisha set up mydala.com towards the end of 2009 with her own savings.
“I was pregnant when I started mydala,” she says. “It was challenging convincing investors that a very pregnant woman, that too a first time mom, would be serious about the company and not quit once the baby was born. I came back to work within 10 days of giving birth and managed my newborn and my new venture fairly well,” adds Singh. Early motherhood never acted as a impediment to her growth curve.
And if you thought early motherhood and her business venture narrowed down her interests, it comes as something of a revelation that Anisha is a trained yoga instructor. “I love cake decorating and am a certified professional cake decorator. I can’t bake a cake to save my life, but give me a three-tiered cake and it will look like it’s straight out of a magazine catalogue. As for snooker, it is my favourite way to chill out on holidays, over beer. I am fairly good at it,” she says.
The young CEO is also a voracious reader. “I pick up anything written by Indian authors such as Indu Sundaresan, Jhumpa Lahiri and Chitra Banerjee. In my book shelf, you will find everything from cookbooks to baby books and books on entrepreneurship and yoga journals. Growing up, we used to have this Sunday routine of spending the afternoon at a bookstore. We’ve started that with our daughter so that she catches the reading bug early,” smiles Singh.
As a woman entrepreneur, had the journey been difficult? “No. I think, only women have the capacity to multi-task, manage everything in just the right manner.
But we often do a lot of pondering. We need to get going and stop thinking too much. Life would be easier then.”