E-Paper
Founder forgot to cancel billboard near DLF Emporio, ended up paying ₹40 lakh
The founder of Ekaya Banaras has revealed the one mistake that ended up costing her a whopping ₹40 lakh.
The founder of Ekaya Banaras has revealed the one mistake that ended up costing her a whopping ₹40 lakh. Palak Shah took to Instagram to talk about the oversight that led to the massive loss when she was just starting out.
Ekaya Banaras is a luxury Indian textile and fashion brand known for contemporary Banarasi sarees, lehengas and handwoven fabrics. The company describes itself as a 120+ year-old, fourth-generation family textile business that evolved into the modern label Ekaya. It has stores in cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad.
The billboard mistake that cost lakhs
Recalling the incident, Mumbai-based Palak Shah said it happened in 2012 or 2013, when she was around 21 and had just launched the brand. Wanting to create visibility for Ekaya, she rented a hoarding near Delhi’s luxury retail destination DLF Emporio despite not having a store there at the time.
“When I had just started off, and I was 21… I’d taken up a hoarding near DLF Emporio one day. I didn’t have a store there. I just wanted consumers to kind of notice my brand,” she said.
According to Shah, the billboard itself was already a huge expense for a young business. “Back in the day in 2012 or 2013… the hoarding cost me ₹13 lakh or ₹16 lakh for one month,” she said.
(Also read: YouTuber who went viral for tipping row turns attention to ‘elitist treatment’ at Delhi’s most expensive mall)
But the real problem came later. Shah admitted that after booking the advertisement, she completely forgot to stop the campaign.
“I took it and I forgot to stop it. I forgot to pause it,” she said.
The realisation
The entrepreneur said she only realised what had happened two to three months later, when she was driving past Emporio and happened to notice the billboard.
“A couple of months later, I think two, three months later, I'm driving to Emporio and I see my hoarding and I was like, these guys have given it to me for free. That’s amazing,” she recalled.
Shah was still not aware that she was getting billed for the billboard. Even so, she
called up her accountant to double check and received a rude shock.
“I called up my accountant to check and he told me, you've never stopped it. That mistake, I believe, cost me almost 30-40 lakhs back in the day when the business was still very small,” she said.
Her father’s reaction
Shah also spoke about informing her father about the financial blunder, saying she had no choice because the expense would eventually show up in the company’s balance sheet. Palak Shah’s father, Bharat Shah, is Director of Ekaya Banaras.
“I remember calling up my dad and I had to own up to it because the balance sheet was eventually going to show it,” she said.
Instead of getting angry, however, her father reacted calmly. “Instead of screaming at me, he said, ‘It’s okay, you will learn. These are one of the mistakes you’re going to make,’” Shah recalled.
She added that the incident taught her to become far more careful as a business owner. “Sure enough, I’ve become a lot more vigilant… Here’s hoping I don’t make such expensive mistakes again because that cost me a bomb,” she said.
