Ankita Gaba, Owner, Super Chooha

Managing celebrity life
While most entrepreneurs deal with commoners, she deals with celebrities. Ankita Gaba, an enterprising lading pursuing her MBA, founded Super Chooha in June 2008. An online presence management firm, Super Chooha partners with celebrities and helps them manage their online presence by creating, designing and maintaining their blogs and social networking profiles. It furnishes a platform that facilitates a candid conversation between celebs and their fans.  

Gaba’s unique enterprise helps the luminaries express and portray themselves as they wish to and not how the media presents them. It gives them the opportunity to connect with their fans on a one to one basis. An online presence biz like this is a boon to the glitterati,
who are more often than not considered inaccessible, shrewd and snobbish. Super Chooha endeavours to break this ice; it strives to shake people out of their set notions and give personalities an opportunity to show the best of their real self. This, as Gaba says, is the only way to break the shackles of the sometimes biased, prejudiced and sadistic media.

The scope of the organisation is immense, and although celebrities are its only customers now, Gaba plans to foray into other businesses too. Currently, it engages in branding and marketing celebrities and maintaining and strengthening their brand image. “We constantly strive to make celebrities and other businessmen understand the benefits of online presence. We intend to take up online presence management for personalities across all segments like entertainment, finance and education,” Gaba said adding that the plan to get into social marketing, an opportunity in itself, is at its nascent stage. 

To Gaba, the very idea of a 9-5 job never seemed exciting enough. For her, her entrepreneurial venture is like a baby that demands attention at all times of the day. It is the struggle to achieve one’s goal independently that give her an unmatchable high. When she set about realising her dream, the biggest challenge this young entrepreneur faced was to sell the idea to her clients. “Until Super Chooha happened, nobody had ever heard of a concept like this; it was extremely tough for us to convince our clients that our firm is dependable and inclined towards serving their purpose,” she asserted. “To overcome this challenge, we did some research on television stars and blogs. We also tried meeting people from within the industry to gain whatever inputs we could. With all the research and feedback from the entertainment industry, we dared to approach our first client — Ram Kapoor,” Gaba said with excitement in her voice.

Interestingly, unlike other ventures that require colossal capital investment, this one managed with peanuts. The firm uses blogger for managing its clients’ blog and social networking sites, which cost close to nothing and therefore requires no seed capital. However, it does charge for designing, maintaining and marketing of blogs and networking sites, but the amount is fiddling.

Not that the times weren’t trying. The enterprise lured a number of clients initially, but had to hound for even a handful thereafter. “Despite all our efforts to convince celebs that online presence is crucial to any one seeking to reach out to the masses, the response we received was discouraging. That phase did compel me to think about taking up a job,” admitted Gaba.    

But you would marvel to know what helped this unsettled mind to cling to her rollercoaster entrepreneurial ride. “Entrepreneurship gives one unrestrained freedom, creative freedom, freedom in terms of taking decisions and, of course, the flexible working hours. There is a lot of fun suffering from having to do 10 things at a time, and from making all the small and big decisions by yourself and being responsible for them too,” she said with a coy smile.

Gaba plans to extend her network in the years to come and take her venture to greater heights. As of now, the only reward she holds close to her heart is the appreciation she receives from the clients for her work.  

Tips for budding entrepreneurs — Start networking. Sounds clichéd, but it helps you grow your business and expand your horizon. One has to go on pursuing their goals. The fun is in the chase not in achieving it.