I built a D2C brand from home and sold it. Now I help founders build theirs.
In 2020 I started Bombay Toy Company from my home. In 2024 it was acquired. Now I work inside other founders' brands like a cofounder would: pricing, ads, website, team, every big decision. And you keep all your equity.
Before I built a brand, I spent 30 years inside other people's businesses.
Sales, banking, electronics, consulting, an airline. First in Dubai, where I grew up, then in Mumbai, and across 9 countries. That's where I learnt how a business grows, breaks and rebuilds.
The corporate years
01
At 15, my first job: sales
You learn very fast that nobody buys because you're nice. They buy because you understood what they needed.
02
National Bank of Dubai, Samsung Gulf Electronics
Banking, then consumer electronics, and a few others. How money moves, and how a product gets sold.
03
18 years in consulting
McKinsey, KPMG, Deloitte, EY. I saw why companies stall. And how often the advice stays in a deck nobody acts on.
04
Global Head of Learning & Development, Jet Airways
Then Go Air. An airline doesn't run on talent alone. It runs on systems and people who know their one job.
Then I built one
2020
Bombay Toy Company, from my home
In the middle of COVID. No background in toys. Never run a business of my own. An all-women team, while raising my 3 kids.
4 yrs
Building it so it didn't need me
Systems that didn't rely on me. A team that could run without the founder at the centre. Not glamorous. Very necessary.
2024
It was acquired, and I exited
The buyer wasn't buying me. They were buying a business that could run without me. That is what made it sellable.
Now
Kavea & Co
Founders kept bringing me their hardest business conversations. So I made it formal. 145 clients and counting.
Toys. I knew nothing about them in 2020Every order, packed and shipped
What my own brand taught me
A business is worth what it does without you.
When Bombay Toy Company was acquired, it wasn't just the revenue or the brand. It was independence. Systems that didn't rely on me, and a team that could run without me in the middle.
Most founders I meet are the exact opposite. Every job, every decision, every shoot runs through them. Brutally honest? That's usually the first thing we change.
0experience in toys before 2020
4 yrsfrom my home to an exit
3 kidsraised alongside it
Sales go up. Profit stays flat. I see this chart in so many brands I walk into.
What a Fractional Cofounder is
Cofounder in everything but equity.
Why does profit stay flat? Because pricing, marketing, customers and teams are managed separately, and nobody looks at how they affect each other.
I was a consultant for years, so I know exactly what a consultant does: a great big deck, then out of your life. I don't do that. I work inside the business, on every call, across every team, and I take a stand rather than agree for the sake of it.
Are you a stall at a mela, or the kirana shop on the corner?
The stall at the mela
You shout offers, buy 2 get 1 free, the whole crowd comes. Crazy weekend. Next weekend, new location, same offers, same shouting. You're renting your audience every single time.
The kirana shop on the corner
Rented a space, kept stock, maybe lost money on the first sale. But Sharma auntie comes back for the 10 kg bag every month, without a single offer. That's a habit. That's a business.
Once you see this, you'll have a very different, very mature conversation with your marketer. Okay?
Mostly, I listen firstI still write it all by hand
How it starts
You talk. I find the gap between what you think is wrong and what is.
Before we even speak, you fill a short form, then about 30 questions that take an hour or more. And that too, brutally honest. Then I take at least 3 days to sit with your answers.
On the call, I tell you what I see. No lies, no mincing words.
