A young South Asian professional with amazing clarity of vision to take a chance with entrepreneurship early in her career, Nikita Gupta co-founded Symba with conviction on an unmet need of young professionals and businesses, based on her first-hand internship experiences in the corporate world. In talking to Nikita, I couldn’t help but admire her humble confidence, backed by the solid foundation of her upbringing, unflinching support of her parents and a drive for risk taking that is quintessential for successful entrepreneurship.
In this edition of the Neythri FoundHer & FundHer spotlight, we take a look at Nikita Gupta’s journey as a social entrepreneur and co-founder of Symba. Nikita grew up in the tech field, with her first tryst with entrepreneurship in high school when she founded “Nikita’s Kitchen” to monetize her culinary skills. She graduated from Cornell University as a computer science engineer, and worked as an intern with several corporations like Martha Stewart, Bank of America and Apple. Nikita quickly realized that large corporations lacked the space she needed for technical creativity and freedom, and had the courage to choose entrepreneurship as her path to learning, albeit through hardships and mistakes. Nikita met her co-founder Ahva Sadeghi at a tech-fair and started her journey with Symba where she leads Symba’s software engineering and product development, and wears multiple hats across operations and sales.
Symba is a unique social impact mission driven technology company that provides a platform for companies to design talent development programs. It provides a comprehensive software platform that helps organizations handle the logistics of an internship program from onboarding and project assignment to communication and feedback. According to Forbes, companies like “Symba are working tirelessly to ensure that the academic and learning and development industries are prepared to close the gap between the future of education and the future of work and build the bridge to remote employment, including leadership training, instructional design, and virtual internships.” Today Symba shines as a promising women led tech start up, having received its first two rounds of funding in the highly competitive silicon-valley startup world.
Read below to find out more about Nikita’s story:
What does being a South Asian founder mean to you?
My parents moved to the US in the ‘90s after they got married in India. I was born and raised in New Jersey, but I am very Indian at heart. Our family has followed all Indian traditions and I have loved every aspect of it. Growing up, my friends were mostly Indian and I have cherished the deep-connection my parents gave me to Indian values. Being South Asian, I believe that we have a solid foundation of discipline and hard work instilled in us. We can be scrappy and frugal when need be, and take calculated risks when the opportunity is right. This has definitely helped me when launching Symba.
For me, being a female founder is a more special achievement. In Symba, while we have always received a lot of traction for our unique business idea and value proposition, we have constantly faced challenges in funding. We have found that our male counterparts in Silicon Valley, with lesser proven track records, have tended to raise money far more easily. Funders tend to fund people who look like them. Our female founding team has often heard limiting comments like “you should feel lucky to be where you are”. The bar always seems to be set higher for us. But we are determined to work through the system and take Symba to its true potential.
Growing up, what influences helped set your course as a founder?
My father was also an entrepreneur from a young age and always supported any entrepreneurial ambitions I have had, including the creation of “Nikita’s Kitchen”. He was always a champion for education, gave me and my sister tremendous opportunities to try anything we wanted and eventually nudged me into a computer science engineering degree at Cornell. He has been my closest supporter and role model and continues to advise me on various aspects of my work.
My education in computer science was another important pillar for my ambitions. I have always admired the wide applicability of the subject. Cornell had a particularly well-designed course that allowed me to widen my knowledge through non-core courses in hotels, ethics, sociology and a variety of other areas.
What is one thing you wish you would have known starting out?
Start ups are tough to get off the ground. There is a fine line to tread between establishing proofs of concept and driving early adoption. One thing I would do differently would be to not give out our platform free for pilots and beta testing, or invite an easy look through into our technology.
I also wish that we had invested more time and effort on market research before going out with our product. We could have possibly engaged more focus groups for deeper market research to gain a better understanding of customer perceptions, to back what we believe is a genuine unmet need in this space.
What would you like to be known for?
I hope to be a role model for someone else. Growing up I always felt there was a void of professional women role models and I wish I had someone to look up to through my educational and professional journey. In particular I have had very few Indian women role models to look up to (other than Indira Nooyi).
Another ambition is to be known as a successful social entrepreneur, and I hope to fulfill this through Symba, which is indeed a business that drives true social impact.
Who are the people you admire and believe are accomplishing great things right now?
I have always looked up to Indira Nooyi as a role model and an effective South Asian leader. She has had the power to motivate many young professionals like myself. Also, through the course of my education and experience in the Silicon Valley, I have formed a tight circle of colleagues and friends excelling in various fields of technology including fashion tech and health tech. I have always found them to be a great sounding board, a safe circle to talk to and vent my frustrations, get the support I need to ride through tough portions of my journey and seek genuine advice from.
What value do you think Neythri provides, and what do you hope to see more of?
Neythri is a place where I have seen and met more and more women like me and I cannot be more thankful for that. It is a great community of accomplished women to look up to. I feel like I can finally find the role models I have sought all along. I love the networking and social events that the platform brings. I hope Neythri will continue to bring more purposeful and insightful events and resources to the community of South Asian Professional women.
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Author Bio:
Smriti Shekhar is an experienced fundamental multi-strategy, multi-sector international portfolio manager and investment analyst in public equities, with demonstrated track record of top quartile long term investment performance. Diverse experience across large institutions and entrepreneurial teams, from core investments and developing investment framework and tools, to strategic business development and capital raising. Career highlights include – foundational equity research experience at Fidelity Investments, portfolio management of funds in emerging and developed markets at NN Investments and Nuveen Asset Management and Tax/ transaction advisory consulting at Ernst & Young.
