The guest for this interview of Out of the Clouds is Siddha Jain, Chief Business Officer at Bombae, by Bombay Shaving Company, a premium women’s personal care and grooming brand launched during the pandemic.
Siddha is a savvy and creative executive who in her own words followed the expected track, first studying hard to first become an engineer, then obtaining an MBA, and later becoming a consultant at Bain & Company.
Host Anne invites Siddha to talk about her story (hint: her goal is to prove herself). She explains how her mother imbued her with vision and taught her the value of being persistent. She then reveals her own vision, with the not-so-hidden aim to become an expert in other fields, essentially a ‘jack of all trades.’ Siddha also brings her ikigai, the Japanese concept of having a sense of purpose, and shares how her passion for dance and creating events are extracurricular pursuits that connect her to the greater purpose of her life.
The pair touch on Bombae’s values and the content strategies that the brand uses to connect with its customers, including a collaboration with India’s top women stand-up comedians. And, as a woman at the executive level, Siddha offers her thoughts about what helps her feel confident as well as how and why she brings her full self to work.
Then Anne asks Siddha to talk about what it’s like to build a brand and design products for a bold and cheeky consumer. Bombae’s mission around hair removal is raised, which leads them to explore the complex relationship women in India and around the world have with their body and facial hair.
A deeply engaging interview with a thoughtful and passionate woman. Happy listening!
Selected links from episode
You can find Siddha Jain on Instagram @eat.dance.styleaway and on LinkedIn
Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
Jack of all trades full quote
Fashion designer Roland Mouret
Coke Studio TV program
Actress Alaya F
Starboy by the Weeknd
A Man Called Ove, the novel
Full episode transcript
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Hi, hello, bonjour and namaste. This is Out Of The Clouds, a podcast at the crossroads between business and mindfulness. And I’m your host Anne Muhlethaler. So today my guest is Siddha Jain. Siddha is the chief business officer for a company called Bombae, which is the women’s side of the Bombay Shaving Company. Siddha is a very savvy and creative business executive, and I was delighted to be introduced to her. So we have a very wide ranging conversation. For those of you who are regular listeners of the podcast, I assume that you’re by now familiar with the format. I asked Siddha to first start to tell me her story, her journey, and she shared some intriguing things. Like for example, how she always wanted to prove herself and also how she made very few active choices in her life. She also tells me about her love of dance, her passion for organizing events, which let’s say were her favorite extracurricular activities. While she pursued, let’s say, a very straight and narrow trajectory in terms of her career. First becoming an engineer and then gaining her MBA.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Siddha is a woman in an executive position. So we talk about confidence and what helps her cultivate it, how important it is for her to bring her full self to work. And she also shares some of the life lessons or traits that she learned from her mother. We then talk of course, about brand building. Bombae is only 18 months old and is bringing in 25% of the revenue of the group company. And we also talk about the important and subtle or difficult relationship that women have with their facial and body hair. We finished by talking about tattoos, our favorite words, and she shares some really compelling thoughts, when I ask her about a place that has marked her in her life. I adored my conversation with Siddha and I’m hoping that you’re going to enjoy it as much as I did. So here we go, happy listening. So Siddha, thank you so much for joining me on Out Of The Clouds. Welcome.
Siddha Jain:
Thank you so much, Anne. I am very happy to be here.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Same here. It’s so nice to see you again.
Siddha Jain:
Same here.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I love to ask my guest to start by telling their story quite freely. Instead of starting with what we do, I like to start with talking about who we are. And sometimes people think it’s a big question, but I like to start this way. So, Siddha, would you do me the honor and tell our listeners a little bit about who you are and where you come from?
Siddha Jain:
I’ll be happy to and a very, very good start. I also personally believe that you know the person, everything else about them comes secondary. So let me start by what the meaning of my name is because I think that gives a lot of perspective. At least in India, all names mean something. So I feel that people manifest it in different ways, or at least manifest what they believe the meaning of their names are. I think it plays a very important role. So ever since I grew up, I’ve been raised by a single mother and she… so siddha breaks as someone who proves. So Siddh, which is the first five letters of my name, mean to prove something. So my mom always told me the meaning of Siddha is to prove. And I think that that has stuck so much with me ever since I was very, very little. If I retrospect is that I think I spent a lot of my childhood trying to prove. I’m jumping the gun here, but I broadly… I come from a very small… not a very small, but a decently small mid-tier town, just on the outskirts of Nagpur, which itself is a town and have been raised by my mother in very interesting and not so normal circumstances.
Siddha Jain:
So I think that has shaped a lot of who I am. Be it ever since I was young, I realized that the ability to get out of poverty or to get out of limited means was to be well educated, to create a life that is a little more elevated from we were at currently, were to work hard and to go up the master experiment. So would have gone from the basic, the bottom level which is food, shelter, clothing to the next level literally means step change. So I think I’ll spend a lot of my childhood in purely immersing myself in education, in finding ways to educate myself.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I love that you started with your name because you’re right actually, thinking about the fact that you started as a little girl, thinking that you had to prove that you could do things is kind of a big deal. So what did you choose to study? What path did you follow for yourself?
Siddha Jain:
So, Anne, that’s a very interesting question. I would like to say that I have not made active choices for the longest time in my life.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I forgot you told me that the first time we talked. And I’d like you to explain this to our listeners. That’s so interesting.
Siddha Jain:
So a lot of the only active choice I made was to prove. I think that’s the only active choice I made.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I love it.
Siddha Jain:
So whatever is handed to me I would try to prove that I can do the best. Not to the outside world or anyone, but just to myself and maybe to my mother. That yes, I could do this and we could do this. In India most of… at least middle class people, low middle class people, the aspiration to go to the next level always is okay, study well. Now it’s really changed. But when I was growing up, there were two, three big jobs that could be a sure sort of thing. If she’s a doctor, if she’s an engineer, have some sort of stability in life. I would say that I was quite a rebellious person in general. So I would choose… I would not change what the outcome was, but I would take the weirdest paths to reach the outcome. I was a very rebellious kid.
Siddha Jain:
So I could very easily be sincere and I could say I was sincere and diligent, but I was not. I have spent a lot of my time being sent out and punished out of class or being chased around by my mother of why I don’t study any time just before the day of the exams. I will find these small ways of rebelling. Nothing major or mainstream, but I think that would be my test against time. But yeah, about choices. So long story short, I have not honestly, till the time I chose this current job, I don’t think I have made any active choices. I truly believe that the universe conspires in my favor and what I have chosen is to make the most out of the situation that most people say is the right thing to do and I have done it. Now finally 30, when I turned 30, I realize, okay, this is high time that I made a more active choice.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Congrats.
Siddha Jain:
So I did make it, but a lot of the previous choices was very typical. Anyone who’s a good student would make. So you do your undergrad in a very good school. You do your preparation for the exam. Then you do a job for a small duration. Then you do a postgrad from another premier. It was a very… such a safe portal. In fact there are wedding portals that target just this cohort. It’s called IAT IAM jobs, which means people who’ve done the two colleges that I have gone through to make them meet and read. So that’s how typical the paths I’ve chosen have been. But as I told you, I’ve chosen a typical ways in between to get out of those. So for example, when I went to my undergrad college, while I went there to take a degree in student engineering, but I think I spent 85% of my time there just dancing or organizing dance events.
Siddha Jain:
So found my small acts of rebellion in this manner. Same with postgrad. Spent most of my time either traveling during my exchange term, across Europe or doing events. My primary identifier was the face of events.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Wow. Can you tell us what kind of events you were throwing?
Siddha Jain:
We have this cultural festival called Unmaad, which means pure bliss or pure celebration, right nomenclaturely. And it has events of two, three different types. One is competitions across four, five genres, which is music, dance, literature, informal events. And then there are these pro nights, et cetera, where performers, famous performers at a national level come and perform and do pro nights and concerts, et cetera. So the event would span across. I started with doing dance events because dance, it would involve orchestrating and getting participants out of different colleges to participate in very interesting and different formats. It could be street battles. It could be group choreo nights. It could be impromptu dance, et cetera, et cetera. So started my first year, did that. Second year was more holistic organization of the entire fest.
Siddha Jain:
From how do we publicize? How do we get more people? How do we get more footfall? Who do we approach to get sponsors, et cetera, and all of that. So everything. So I think I truly enjoy the germination of an idea and adding part creativity to it, and then seeing it manifest at scale, that is something I truly, truly enjoy. And that is honestly, now that I look back, as I speak to you, these are honestly the only active decisions I have made. The first time I was really
Anne V Muhlethaler:
It’s interesting.
Siddha Jain:
… to do dance and to explore dance events at scale. Then we became a little more larger scale. Then when I went to Bain, which was my first long job after my MBA, which is a consulting firm. And even there on the side, I had a wedding planning company with a colleague of mine.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
No way. As a side gig, you were organizing weddings?
Siddha Jain:
Yeah. And I love it.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
You do love events.
Siddha Jain:
Yeah. Imagine. It’s crazy now. And then the first active decision I took the switch job out of Bain, which is to join Bombay Shaving Company. If I look back, actually it reflects the same mentality, which is that I really love the germination of an idea and seeing it impact people at scale. The happiness, joy, and the utility of doing pure consumer, whoever is your audience is your consumer, is something that really attracted me. So it truly was the intersection of strategy, execution and creativity. And I realized that I need all of these three to be very, very excited about my next career. And actually when I made this active decision, then I got crazy with planning. Then I decided that I would plan. I had directionally planned a lot of things. I realized that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert in something.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Allegedly.
Siddha Jain:
Allegedly. Jury’s still out but yeah, let’s say it takes 10,000 hours. And let’s say 200 days a year, you work in India, you work for longer hours. So let’s say you work for 10 hours actively. So 2000 hours a year. So five years is the bare minimum you need to spend time to become an expert at something. So the first five years of my active career was Bain where I was a management consultant. So the first five years of my career directionally were Siddha the consultant or Siddha the thinker and strategizer. And the next five years are now Siddha the business person. And so this is just one year in, but I would, of course at least do this for another five years, four or five years. I decided the next five years would be Siddha the student and traveler and wanna be influencer. And then the next five years would be… I love to cook. I really enjoy cooking and I love fashion. So I have to decide next five year buckets between fashion first or food first. And then the next five years would be something else. But what I really like… I choose to become Jack of many trades and directionally master at some, in my life.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I can’t tell you the strangest synchronicity of you saying this today, because two days… two days ago? Yeah. On Friday evening, I had a podcast interview with a wonderful writer who I got in touch with because he wrote an amazing blog post that I obviously will send you. His name is Salman Ansari. He’s actually of Asian descent, and is based in California. And his blog post, which went viral was about being a polymath, which is a Jack of all trades master of none. And he taught me that there’s a follow up to that saying, which says something along the side of, Jack of all trades master of none, but often better than master of one.
Siddha Jain:
Being master of one.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
So you know what I wanted to tell you, listening to you saying this about your love of working on events and seeing them at scale and bringing joy and ideating and stuff, I was thinking to myself that you must have a lot of vision. In order to bring this to life you need to be able to envision something. And now the way that you’re describing, the way that you’re planning those five year increments of your life, reinforces that. Did you always have this sense that you could have this deep vision into things?
Siddha Jain:
That’s a really good question. Let’s say I’ve always been quite an imaginative and sort of a dreamer. I remember very young. So because it was just me and my mom we used to stay in a small rented house, which was attached to someone also staying in the house and she would go out to work, et cetera. So I had to spend a lot of my childhood by myself. So I do remember vaguely of doing very random things. For example, I would drape outfit called sari from India, which is literally like a long cloth that you drape. So I remember… that’s my earliest memory of having a vision is I remember I draped it very randomly to make a long dress and then I would walk and I would look at the mirror and I would speak about my acceptance speech of say, Miss India or Miss World, et cetera. So I reckon the dreaminess comes from a long time, a long time back. But jokes aside, I think for the longest time, I was able to see visions manifest at low to medium scale in, let’s say, for an event locally, then you do it at a city level or at the national level, et cetera.
Siddha Jain:
And I started realizing that everything takes an army of people to do. It takes hundreds and two hundreds of people to make a two day event a reality. And what I realized is, earlier I used to really undermine my ability to mobilize teams and crowd that I used to think that I would probably not be able to. I would be able to create small task forces and get those small task forces going. But I think the first time I realized the impact I can have on a scaled team of a 40, 50 or a hundred people was when it was two, three days before an event that I am be my postgraduate institution, where I did my MBA. Two days before an event, you can either feel completely prepared or completely overwhelmed. There’s no midway. So I think we were on the overwhelmed side of things and we really… it was like, we need to put 72 hours in the next 48 hours to make this happen.
Siddha Jain:
And I think I gave a war cry speech, which I didn’t know I had capacity and potential of giving and it was part emotional, part passionate. I think that is the first time it actively hit me that a vision is nothing without its execution. And the distance between the vision to execution is purely… let’s say vision is the top of the mount and you are in base camp. It’s purely your ability to navigate the entire team to at least reach somewhere. And it was the first time I realized that I used to think that either I can execute something that I envisioned by just putting my own individual efforts or at least three, four people’s effort and make it happen. And of course, most teams, 20% of the people do 80% of the job. So I realized that two things that I subconsciously did, one is identify and develop deep relationships with these 20% people.
Siddha Jain:
And then being able to mobilize them, made me realize that I can probably… I was underestimating the ability of me in getting things done. So it leads to an unlock. When you think you can move from say a project to a full organizational charter level thing, it’s a different unlock. And I think that confidence then further precedes… or the preceding ingredient for you to be able to then vision larger, bigger, and just the confidence of being able to do that. Because the one thing that I’ve struggled most with, and the one thing that has probably led to the best outcomes is being optimistic to a fault. It requires a different skill and I’m amazed by people. So my founder, who is the CEO of this company, and some very senior partners have been. Especially people who are sales oriented, they will be optimistic to the next level. You cannot even imagine how. How are you so?
Siddha Jain:
Okay this will happen. Okay, we’ll do this. And it comes with so much purity and joy and love. And I realized that that is something that either through my own inherently or surrounding myself with such people I need to develop. Because that optimism then leads you to have that horse’s blinder that you would just focus and then keep dreaming, dreaming bigger and bigger. But I think that was the early identifier for myself, I would say. I hide it pretty well, but I am inherently not a very confident person, but I found my devices to aid confidence when I feel under confident.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
That’s interesting. I have to ask about that now. What do you do to help you feel or fill yourself with more confidence?
Siddha Jain:
So there are two parts for this. One is external confidence, one is internal confidence. External confidence is a little easy. So what I do is that… it’ll sound very, very vain, but the one thing that I… I feel that everyone should have one anchor every day that they feel everything in the world could go wrong, but that one thing cannot go wrong. That one thing is in their mind, at least untouched, undeterred, undone. And for me, that one thing is how I’ve dressed.
Siddha Jain:
I have found personally for me, the whole process of getting dressed, et cetera, is so meditative in itself. I like to call myself, I like to be a peacock of the crowd. I like to stand out. I feel that the one thing… and for different people it will be different. For someone it could be a special someone in their life. For someone it could be their pad, it could be their child. It could be the food they eat. It could be anything. It could be something very deep and something deep and shallow, and of course also very subjective. But that one rock for me from an external perspective is literally I can look myself in the mirror, at Siddha, the world could collapse right now, but one thing that can’t collapse is how beautiful you look. And that’s something that is a source of external confidence that I… it’s like my armor. It’s literally my preparation to go into the gladiator suite. So for me it’s my armor, literally. So, that is my primary external confidence source. So you were saying something?
Anne V Muhlethaler:
That’s fascinating. There was a designer I used to work with called Roland Mouret who’s pretty famous and for some of these amazing dresses, like the Galaxy dress. And I remember that he often talked about the clothes he was making for women as a soft armor. And now I’d like to ask you, do you feel like you need to put on an armor in order to brave the business world nowadays as a woman?
Siddha Jain:
Yeah. I would say everyone has different devices. You’ve not seen me… you can’t see my height on this, but I am very short. I am five feet, two inches.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I thought you were five eight. Well see, you look tall to me.
Siddha Jain:
Maybe it’s my bone structure, but I’m very short.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Exactly.
Siddha Jain:
I’m very short. I look younger than people who you would expect to be at this stage in business. And we can talk about this endlessly, but I think that for the longest time, because there were fewer women in leadership positions in business, they had a lot of male mentors. So a lot of the looking up to that they needed to, or had to do, was to conform to the way they were. So even if you see a lot of the first generation or the second generation CXO’s, CEO’s who are women, would have very similar haircuts, will have a specific type of baritone. So I feel that there was a certain amount of compromise. Or I don’t know, maybe it was their choice, but there were a certain impact of the environment or the setting that they were working around and they had to conform, or they had to be a part of the table to have a voice at the table. I might have had to make some, maybe subconscious tweaks. And that is something that I have promised myself I would never do. I would never chop my head to save time.
Siddha Jain:
I would never chalk my hair to save time, apart from saving time, but to be taken more… I would never want to change my personality to be able to fit into that definition of, “This is what a business woman or the leader of a business looks like, sounds like.” I go the extreme other way. I will dress in the confines of what is, of course, appropriate, acceptable and so on. But I will always stand out. That is something that I would always do, especially when it’s meetings with investors, et cetera and all of that, I will ensure that you can’t miss me, in a sea of blues and whites, I will be purple and I will-
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Exactly. And for our listeners who, unlike me, can’t see you right now, you have a really beautiful, beautiful shawl, or is that part of your sari?
Siddha Jain:
Yes, it’s [inaudible 00:25:52]
Anne V Muhlethaler:
In degrades of pinks and that would definitely stand out in a sea of blue and gray and back.
Siddha Jain:
Yes. That is something that I use, honestly, as a device also to express my personality. And also I consciously, especially when I have bigger meetings, more impact to make, I actually think about what I will be wearing. I totally don’t understand the whole philosophy of only dressing in a particular color to save time. I feel that there should be some joy. And for everyone there’s a different joy. Maybe for them it’s food, for someone it’s some… I feel like colors and self expression are so important, especially… I am designing for the woman consumer, I am designing products and making scale happen for the woman consumer. I should be as colorful, bold, badass as the woman consumer. The brand needs to emulate the personality that I have and vice versa. I need to stay honest to that. But very consciously choose my armor.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
That’s awesome.
Siddha Jain:
And it gives me great joy to choose it.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I can tell. The energy that you’re giving me as you’re talking about it is very clear. It’s funny when you say that because I have a half brother and his late wife used to despair because he has been wearing the same clothes year in, year out. He will find a pair of jeans and a polo or a shirt, and he will wear them until they fall off of his back, unless you make him wear something else. But he’s a scientist so his joy comes somewhere else. Each to their own. He finds his creativity in other places, I guess.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Now, I remember in our first conversation that you told me, and I think you hinted at it, that your relationship with your mother was seminal to you because she brought you up as a single mom. I’d love to hear from you, how much has she shaped or how do you feel her influence, now that you’re in the position that you are in?
Siddha Jain:
All mothers and daughters have complicated relationships, to say the least. We, being the one person for each other, has shaped my life in both very positive and sometimes not so positive ways as well. I think two, three amazing things that I absolutely, absolutely imbibe from her, and even [inaudible 00:28:32] I don’t realize it, is she is relentless to a fault. The amount of perseverance it would’ve taken for a 21-year-old to raise a daughter in extremely poor circumstances, when the entire family is disowning you and when you yourself aren’t educated enough to earn even basic, it requires a totally different muscle, it requires you to almost… That armor, you use a virtual armor. But she had to really create a very strong armor, one to protect me, second to find means for us to grow and also to be very headstrong. And she also had a vision. Her vision was to ensure I don’t compromise on my education. One way or the other, that was something that she always ensured.
Siddha Jain:
I think just the fact that, A, have that vision and stick to it, I think it comes a lot from her. Second, she’s so relentless and perseverant, not even from the early time, but even now. She’s 55 years old and every two, three years she had a completely different aspiration and it’s cute, it’s sometimes frustrating, but it is just so amazing that she has that curiosity to want to learn something impeccable. She wanted to learn animal husbandry once because she wanted to go back and she said, “When I was young, we used to farm and we used to have these cows and goats. So, I want to learn how to raise animals,” which changed to, “I want to study law,” which she studied, which changed to, “I want to do something in education.”
Siddha Jain:
While I would love for her to follow through a little more, but I think just the vision and curiosity that she has to learn is something that inspires me, because there are times when I see people who are 25, 26 and they question, they start having a midlife crisis at that age, “What I am doing with my life? I need to start running and owning things right now.” But I think there’s just so much beauty in pursuing knowledge and learning and getting better every day and to give it time. In the generation of Netflix and instant gratification, I think something that we tend to forget a lot is that everything is not as easy as switching, “I don’t like this. Let me switch, let me switch. Let me swipe left. Right, et cetera.”
Siddha Jain:
I think she keeps me grounded a lot like that. So, A, dream and vision. Second, when you dream and vision, have curiosity and intent to learn. And third, be perseverant and relentless. I think some of those, I generally have in my genes without actively seeking them out. And on days when I forget, I remind myself that she’s gone through a lot. We’ve gone through a lot for us to be here. The amount of gratefulness I feel it is extremely high.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
That’s so wonderful. She sounds really amazing.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Now I hear about her many aspirations, I also understand what you were sharing about your switching five year plans except that you want to follow through.
Siddha Jain:
I just need them [inaudible 00:32:00].
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Exactly. You want to become an expert at each of those. That’s awesome.
Siddha Jain:
Yes.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Let’s switch it up and talk a little bit about the brand that you were brought in to spearhead. Let’s start first by how did this brand come about? Because it’s pretty recent, isn’t it?
Siddha Jain:
Yes, it’s been one and a half years. It’s very interesting. Bombay Shaving Company, for a little bit of context, started about five and a half, six years back with the core objective to make the whole grooming experience more joyful and sexy for men. Earlier, it was very drudgery, very… It’s a functional thing, you do it, you get over with it. Men don’t even talk to each other about it. It was really to elevate and add joy and sass to the process of upkeep. Especially, the world is changing. Now it’s not so…
Siddha Jain:
Earlier, if I have to be very crass about it, a lot of the onus of looking good in India was on women. That was, in a way, an input factor into how well off you would marry, to how stable your family would get, and the onus of getting financially stable as of the guy. But as more and more women enter into the workforce, more and more general equality of education comes about, then jobs start becoming equal, women start being more financially independent. So, they’re not marrying primarily to gain stability, but they’re marrying more out of choice and out of sheer willingness to share a life with that person, at least directionally.
Siddha Jain:
Then, you have to up your game. Then, you can’t just be, “I work hard [inaudible 00:33:50]” Yes/ that was the change we were seeing and that was how the company started. It started with shaving, grooming, went into a lot of personal care and it still does. And one and a half year back, when the first wave of COVID hit, I hadn’t joined then, yet. But there were women in the company who were like, “It’s COVID. We can’t go anywhere.”
Siddha Jain:
In India, hair removal for women is 80% to 90% services, where you go to a salon and you get waxed. That is the primary mode of hair removal versus, let’s say, in Europe, anywhere, cities that are still much more penetrated, it would be the inverse there. Here, because cost of services is cheaper and the outcome of vaccine is perceived to be higher in terms of longevity, shaving or hair removal, from a DIY or a product environment, was there but wasn’t as big as services. They were like, “We are a shaving company.” It was something for women.
Siddha Jain:
The first set of products that we gave was a full regimen, or I would like to call it a ritual of hair removal, which was a shaving foam, a shaving razor and an after shave gel, all three of them to make the whole process very ritualistic, very elevated DIY, and with a very state-of-the-art, beautifully designed razor that we went into the market with. That’s how.
Siddha Jain:
Margaret Mead had said, “Never doubt what a group of well-intentioned citizens can change the world, indeed it is the only thing that can.” I think that truly holds true for this example because yes, it started there and what started as just an offshoot, then we quickly realize that, without a lot of marketing, this will naturally of course powered by COVID, was picking up so well, that we realize, “By the way, this is a gold mine.” And anyway women run the world or the future of anything that you do. So, when we realized that, “This is not an offshoot, this is a whole big thing and we need to nurture it and nourish it,” that’s where I came in and we started to make it a separate brand and give it a whole new identity and of course create a whole longer range of products to satisfy this identity. That’s how the inception or the origin story went about.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Thank you so much for sharing that. I looked up the range and I discovered the website and stuff and some of this could do well in Europe too, by the way.
Siddha Jain:
Yes. We already thought.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I just want to tell you that. But I’d love for you to share how you ended up joining, because I believe you thought that the Bombay Shaving Company was based in Bombay, didn’t you?
Siddha Jain:
Of course. Imagine that a company called Geneva Shaving Company and it’s based in Berlin, you would be shocked.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I would be, yes.
Siddha Jain:
Yes, that’s an interesting story. Almost five years in at Bain, I started realizing that my ikigai was in this intersection of strategy, execution and creativity, we spoke about this before. And what I was doing at Bain was a lot of strategy, a little bit of execution, but whenever you’re servicing clients, it’s not yours, it’s not your baby. You’re, at best, babysitting. You can do your best job at babysitting, but it will still not be your baby. You will not see the first steps or the first words and all of those things, the milestones of the journey.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
That’s the best way to describe it, because I’m a consultant and I find that very painful sometimes. Exactly.
Siddha Jain:
Yes, that was weighing on me for some time and I just laid the thoughts of, “I want to leave,” out to the universe. That’s the best I had done. I verbally told a few of my team members who were my juniors and were very close to me. One of them took this responsibility of helping finding me a job, very to the heart. He would very keep sending me, “This is very regular hip and very entrenched into the investor community and LinkedIn, et cetera.” So, I used to do a lot of this and I’m very, very thankful to everything with Kaushik.
Siddha Jain:
And three, four times he’d send me something, I looked past it out of either being busy or feeling that this doesn’t seem to match, et cetera. But I hadn’t really actively paid attention. But then, one day he sent me a LinkedIn post and it was different because, before these, I was getting these job descriptions and these PDFs and this was a very crisp LinkedIn post with five bullet points. And he said, “Hey, this description of the person that he’s looking for sound exactly like you.”
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Awesome.
Siddha Jain:
And then, I read it and I was like, “Oh my god, yes.” They took my essence and written it down. It was almost like destiny. And I was like, “Okay, two things. One, Kaushik is making a lot of effort for me. I should at least make the effort of…” Like going on a date. All of your friends are trying to set you up and you’re not even having the audacity or the gratitude to at least go on one of those dates that they’ve set up for you. Okay, worth going on a date. I saw the name of the company, it was Bombay Shaving Company. Usually, I would check where the company is based out of, et cetera, because I was in the city of Bengaluru, which is in the southern part of India. And if you know about India, in India each state is a different country. India is as diverse as EU in itself.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Yes, of course.
Siddha Jain:
The southern part of India is very different from the northern part of India, from everything, quality of life, weather, et cetera. And a whole, where you are, support group. So, I had a very strong support group in Bengaluru. I had not thought that I would leave the city at all. But because the name had Bombay, Bombay is where I did my undergrad and that was my second first home because after I was in Nagpur, my hometown, for 17 years and the first plunge out of Nagpur for my undergrad college was in Bombay. So, it had some sense of attachment to it. So, I think, of course, worth exploring. “I can go on a date, even if that date doesn’t become a serious thing, but maybe a one night stand, who knows?” That is what I thought.
Siddha Jain:
I had the first conversation, it was amazing. Towards the final of the conversation, she tells me, “We are based in Delhi.” And I was like, “Oh my god, I hate Delhi.” I don’t use the word hate for anything. I’m a very kind person. I’m very choice about my use of the word hate. I never use it for anything. But I really did hate the city for a lot of reasons. I won’t go into that.
Siddha Jain:
So, first date, second date, third date, a lot of these dates happened.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Oh, dear.
Siddha Jain:
And I realized that… Most of those conversations weren’t about what the role is or if it’s right for me, et cetera. I was like, “Oh my god, how do I go to that place?” But I’m glad I did. I think that what the CEO, Shantanu, convinced me and rightly is that, “You are too young in your life to not jump into something that sounds perfect out of location.” And of course he made it very comfortable for me, “You can do whatever you want. You can travel back and forth or you can join remotely for some time,” et cetera and all of that. That was the interesting story of not knowing which restaurant my date was at, in a way, and still making it happen.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
You overcame your hate of Delhi.
Siddha Jain:
Yes.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
That’s phenomenal.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Now, I read a little bit, there were a few articles that I saw on you and a couple of really lovely interviews that you’ve given. And I remember you telling me, prior to today’s conversation, that you had a lot of fun and you felt like a lot of commitment towards shaping culture even when you were at Bain, and that creating links between people was really important. And I read that, even though you’re under the umbrella of the Bombay Shaving company, which is obvious a men’s grooming brand, you’re almost entirely a buy woman for woman brand. I was wondering if you could talk to me about what it was like to support this brand’s setup and work towards the culture, as well as developing the product.
Siddha Jain:
Yes, that’s a very good question.
Siddha Jain:
Firstly, we are such a well-knit company and internally the leadership team, the CEO, the COO and I co-chair what we call the people committee, which is the wellbeing and culture and karma of everyone at Bombay Shaving Company, everyone, all employees. What we have in common is that we are truly people, first. I think we all come from institutions where we’ve witnessed that great things happen when you have the right people.
Siddha Jain:
I think one is that intention. Before you do meditation or before you do yoga, you first set the intent of the practice. That intent has always been that we know that the right people and we have a definition, with the right intrinsic, with the right passion and love and care for what we are trying to build is all that we need to get. That is the basic premise and foundation of how we’ve identified building blocks of the culture and those are things that we live by across the organization and those are the thing that we actively seek in everyone we get in the company.
Siddha Jain:
But coming to the for women by women thing, I think what we realized very early on is that, especially the moment I came in, one of the things became apparent, that being a consumer or being at least the target audience or the target group for the particular product is already a big hump cross. A lot of the experiences are so personal, a woman can at best describe what a hair removal experience is like, what a period feels like, et cetera, can at best describe and at best we can create simulators for men to experience that. The daily feeling, [inaudible 00:44:57], et cetera of what they go through, be it hair removal, be it any life journey, is something that is very innate and fortunately or unfortunately has become a part of how we hear it.
Siddha Jain:
For example, I was talking to my CEO the other day and he was like, “Actually, I realized that I don’t know how it is to feel unsafe on a regular basis.” And I was like, “I feel unsafe five, 10 minutes every day, at least.” If I’m walking alone in an alley or if I’m in a lift with this one person and it’s too late in the night or if I’m waiting for my cab and just late it in the night.
Siddha Jain:
I realize that these are some things that we don’t even realize that we have conditioned ourselves to. But this is an example of an experience. A lot of these cumulative experiences are something that we need to build for. And we realize that most organizations or men building for women, hence every marketing, every brand campaign looked exactly the same. It was so male POV, the name of the product would be Desire and all. Which woman will name a product, which woman will want to buy a product called Desire?
Anne V Muhlethaler:
That’s hilarious.
Siddha Jain:
It’s very small things. But we realized very early on, from the way I used to speak about the consumer and we used to explain to each other and many men used to be, “Oh wow.” This is not “Oh, wow,” this is just 101. I think it also helps for a woman to be designing for women hence she knows that for this role, this kind of a thing is more useful, so I wouldn’t say that we’ve actively chosen to have just women, but we’ve seen that women just inherently understand the problem statements so well that we’ve seen them create exceptional outcomes. So, for the core part of what we develop as a brand, what we develop as products, et cetera, it is primarily women.
Siddha Jain:
We also want some diversity in terms of input cetera, so we do go back to the broader organization, et cetera, for help and support on strategic inputs and all of that. But for creating the core of the design, this is what it should look like, this is what we should sound like, all the five, six Senses is all owned by women to a great extent. I think that brings a lot of character to what we do.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Yes, character is certainly something that I found and I really enjoyed it. I really, really enjoyed it.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I want to jump off straight away to asking you, how did you guys decide to do this collaboration with female comedians to talk about their grooming and their shaving or waxing experiences? Because I was thinking to myself, “Boy, I could participate in that because I’ve had some pretty bad experiences before.”
Siddha Jain:
Exactly. That brings a lot of memories. You should check out… I don’t know if you saw the standup we do as well.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
No, I didn’t see the standup, I just saw the Instagram post.
Siddha Jain:
Okay.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
… That was launching it, and I couldn’t see the link for it. But it looked so fun and I was like, “Oh my God, this is so logical.”
Siddha Jain:
I’m going to send you a link that you will watch when you have time.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Oh yes, please.
Siddha Jain:
What we realized is that every woman, after period, the funniest thing about this experience is that everyone will have … Even sex. My first time was, “How did it feel?” It just opened to so many conversations because, for women, hair removal is the first [inaudible 00:48:52] creator of duty. Before you have sex, the first thing you’ll do, is you’ll check-
Anne V Muhlethaler:
You’re so right.
Siddha Jain:
… Where is the hair, where hair is in the right place. The first I will wear a sleeveless dress, [inaudible 00:49:02] the first check is always, that it meant something as basic instinct as that. It just opens itself to so many interesting conversations. The germination of the idea of “Let’s talk about it. It’s better we talk about it then to make fun of it.”
Siddha Jain:
And what we realized is that it’s a universal experience. Everyone will have their own stories. I remember my first time of hair removal more vividly I remember my first time having sex. That is how vividly… I realize that now I can’t… Anyway, leave that aside. But that’s the truth of it.
Siddha Jain:
So, A, interesting format. B, like everything, women standup comics are way underrepresented in India. Standup comedy is totally picking up, but for every 10 male standup comics, there will be one woman standup comic-
Siddha Jain:
Male standup comics, there would be one woman standup comic, right? So we realized that, again, they were comedy created by men that were very centered around men and their perception of their relationships with women. Some would be thoughtful, but most of them would always be around some very typical topics, et cetera. So we realized, “Hey, this is a golden opportunity to, A, have a women perspective to comedy, something that women will relate to a lot more beyond just laughing from the male POV.” So bring the female POV.
Siddha Jain:
And then within female POV bring some small, interesting aspects of everyone’s experience with grooming, and it naturally turns into so many dirty topics. So it was a very… When you look at these videos, you also realize there’s so much character and uniqueness, such a universal experience as well. So our vision was and is to make standup comedy around grooming to be like, there’s a concept called Coke Studio in India, where there are a lot of live music concerts, as well as shows around this. So the aim and hope is for this to scale and for us to sustain this on a regular basis.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Oh, I see what you’re doing. This is just you organizing events again.
Siddha Jain:
Yeah. Yeah. This was the first physical event. We did this in Bombay in India.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
It sounds fantastic honesty, but I’m really looking forward to watching it. So I want to jump into the topic of, let’s say first marketing and content marketing. So in order to build a new brand, which by the way is incredibly successful. So I read that within a year and a half of launching the Bombae, which is B-O-M-B-A-E, so the women’s side of the Bombay Shaving Company that you’re the head of, is raking in 25% of the sales of the group. So kudos.
Siddha Jain:
Thank you.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Women were indeed ready, and you did a great job, but so how are you building the brand and how is the content that you’re developing helping you connect with the consumer?
Siddha Jain:
So I always define the brand as having four important parts. How memorable the brand is, how shopable it is, how attractive it is and how consumable it is. I think these are the four foundational parts to developing a brand. I’ll speak about each in a bit and then move into content. So memorability is how people remember me by. So what are the things that I say, the thing that I show? A lot of this is a content driven, but memorable is if I were to have asked people who’ve seen me or heard me once to tell me how they feel about it. So that is the memorability of the brand. That’s a very core of what we do, visually over index on how we can make ourselves memorable. Our brand in a sense is to be bold and irreverent and honest. So these are the things, when I think about memorability, I would always ask myself that what we are doing, is it bold? Is it honest? Is it irreverent or all of these together?
Siddha Jain:
So that’s a constant question that I ask myself and for everything that we do, be it, the standup comedy thing that you were speaking about. We did a very interesting Women’s Day campaign called Break the Hairarchy where hair like, H-E-I-R was spelled as hair. And it was about all women just flaunting their body hair and women of different ages, women of different sizes, shapes, et cetera. And especially in India, where most brands just show the outcome. They just show smooth legs in and out. You wouldn’t even be able to see body hair.
Siddha Jain:
And unfortunately, even if you try very hard to actually show body hair, which is something we struggle with as women’s hair. Women are so beautiful and there’s so much light, you can’t even see their hair. So we had to make a lot of active effort to show body hair. But having said that, what we ensure in terms of making the brand memorable is it is always memorable for the thing that we stand for, that people should take away that, “Wow, this was bold. This was honest. This was a little cheeky, but we loved it.” Kind of a thing. So we always push ourselves a lot on these boundaries.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Awesome.
Siddha Jain:
We don’t shy away from taking on behemoths. We don’t shy away from questioning the status quo. We might not be able to do it at a scale that I would love to immediately so, but I think we sowed the seeds for this to branch or into a huge, huge phenomenon. So that is something that I honestly always step back and I’m like, “Are we?” So even as people who we get into as influencers or as creators for my brand, we also do a fair bit of diligence and thinking around them standing and also vibing with the brand. Right?
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Sure. Because I saw you’ve got a great campaign with Alaya F.
Siddha Jain:
Yeah. Yeah.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
She’s so much fun.
Siddha Jain:
Yeah, she is. She is.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I loved the campaign. It looked like a real great alignment with what I understood the brand to be.
Siddha Jain:
Absolutely. Absolutely. You are absolutely right. And in India, there are many actresses and ambassadors I’m aware of who might not even touch the product on their skin, but she literally used every product. She was a user of our product, of our face shaver, et cetera before as well. But in short, she grew out her hair, but she’s so beautiful. Even if you zoom into the Nth level, you can’t see anything. But she’s literally grown out all her body hair, her eyebrows, et cetera, everything. And she is phenomenal to work with. And exactly, she is very honest, she’s herself in so many ways we see. And we found a great connection. She’s so hardworking and the amount of love and joy she just brings on set is just phenomenal. So I agree. We’ve been very conscious of this in all our big, small choices. And luckily they’ve paid off to some extent. So we are very thankful for that.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Oh, that’s awesome. And I was wondering what was the response from the consumers from this campaign?
Siddha Jain:
So I think the few thing that consumers came back with saying was, A, very fresh. We’ve not seeing hair removing celebrated. At best, it would be, “Hey, you’re ready for this date now.” Or hey, whatever. So this was no ulterior motive but to just celebrate and be joyful in the moment about yourself and hence outside. There was a constant in bathroom, outside bathroom, in bathroom, outside bathroom experience. We showed hair removal, at least to some extent, as to what it is. It is not in a very sexy position and you are very sexily removing. It’s never like that. You have to stand in weird angles.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Yeah.
Siddha Jain:
You go crazy in your bathroom. It’s your space, it’s your sanctum.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Women listening to us know exactly what you mean. Ugh.
Siddha Jain:
Yeah, exactly. Right? So we would never create an ad where someones just sitting with legs as shiny as oil with more oil than all the girls combined. And they say like, “Hey, if you remove this, this will happen.” And I’m sure in the West, it might have… Advertising et cetera has already moved leaps and bounds from this, but here at mass and scale, that’s still aspirational. It’s a tough choice to constantly keep standing for what we stand for and hope more and more of the world comes around.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I was thinking to myself that I know enough about… What do I know? I feel like I know what women feel like as to where they stand with body hair and facial hair in Europe, in America. But India is a very different… And I was thinking to myself as I was also reading the way that you’re leading the brand, which I think is very interesting, how do you entertain conversations around women and their relationship with their body hair? And just one thing I want to add, you don’t just talk to women.
Siddha Jain:
Yeah, yeah.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
You talk to your female identifying people.
Siddha Jain:
Yeah. I really-
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Which I thought was already always very, very inclusive and really wonderful to see.
Siddha Jain:
No matter how inclusive we try to get, I realize that there’ll always be some identity that we might be excluding.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Sure.
Siddha Jain:
But I hope that the intent encompasses the gesture. I think every woman’s relationship with her body hair, every individual’s relationship with their body hair is very, very unique and personal. And it’s a very regular relationship. You’re always conscious of it. By conscious I mean you’re always aware of it, that it’s there or the lack of it. So even if it’s, when you stroke your arm, et cetera, where there’s hair, where there’s no hair, et cetera, but you’ll always be aware of what’s going on top to toe with different parts of your body and hair on different parts of your body and how it’s making you feel.
Siddha Jain:
So I feel like, A, relationship is very personal, B, that relationship is very complex. Same thing as fitness. In my early twenties, I used to feel that looking skinny, looking physically skinny is being fit or it was my definition of being fit or looking the way I would want to look. Late twenties became a bit, I went through thyroid disorders, so it was a whole lot of fluctuations where I [inaudible 01:00:50] and I used to feel, “Why am I bloating up?” Et cetera and all of that. But then I realized over time that there’s a deeper meaning to fitness, at least in my body, which means really being physically strong, more than anything, more than looking skinny or being able to fit in the same clothes, which I love. I love having to lose out on my clothes because of sizing up.
Siddha Jain:
For example, I still can’t do pushups properly. I’ve worked out very regularly ever since COVID et cetera. But I think women, relatively upper body strength is a bit lower. So for me, the ability to slightly do better pushups every day is now the new benchmark. And maybe five years later it will be something else and so on. So like that, body hair is a very personal relationship. It evolves over time. When I was younger, I would try all of these weird things if I couldn’t go to a salon to remove my body hair, et cetera, and all of that.
Siddha Jain:
Now, I have a very different approach. But I do feel that inherently, the one thing that a lot of brands sell is that, “If you do this, you will get more confident or you’ll get that job.” Or whatever. It’s there’s always, there are these extensions. We are like, “We don’t care why you do it. We just don’t care why you do it. We only care how you do it.” For us, that is the essence of that relationship, that we don’t care why you remove your hair. It’s your own body. For me, because I believe in this armor and looking a particular way, I do feel like that there are parts of my body hair that I can contain a little more. I don’t care about hair here or here because I have thyroid, I grow hair every two, three days. I have hirsutism, so it just grows out. So I can’t control all of that. But most days where I do feel that I probably remove hair because I feel it elevates the way my outfit looks on me. For someone else, it could be, “Okay-
Anne V Muhlethaler:
That’s interesting.
Siddha Jain:
I remove my belly hair, because I want to belly dance.” For someone who wants to learn how to… I love dancing so I’m going to give a lot of dance examples. Or like someone who loves pole dance, it is actually so important for the skin to touch the pole that you really have to be as smooth as you can, because then you’ll be able to make better contact, et cetera, and all of that. Or it could just be hygiene, it could be for swimming for better flow cetera. Or it could just be like, “I just love the way this feels. I want to lay on my bed and look at the…” Or it could only be, “I want to have sex and I want to be smooth.” Or I don’t.
Siddha Jain:
So our pure essence is that we really don’t care what your relationship is with it and why you are doing this, but we do care how you do it. Because that is somewhere we can bring value, joy to your life. And that’s primarily it. So the way we address this conversation is exactly by saying this, not shying away from the fact that women do have body hair and they have a complex relationship. But I do feel that owning that relationship and then owning how I want to manage it is probably the honest way to go about it.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I appreciate that. Thank you so much for sharing. And also, I can totally relate about the pushups. I actually, I have a personal trainer and I went to her and she said, “What you want to work on?” And I said, “I want to have a stronger mid back.” Because I know this is what holds me back from certain yoga poses, particularly handstand and stuff like that. And since I picked up with her, I can do pushups, not the girl ones.
Siddha Jain:
Oh, really?
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I feel so excited about this.
Siddha Jain:
Oh my God. Please send me some tips because I [inaudible 01:04:56].
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I will tell her I’ve talked to you about this and I’ll send you some tips, for sure.
Siddha Jain:
Oh my god.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Now, I’m glad that we talked about also what you want to offer the customer, the relationship to the product itself. Because I read that with regards to the product development, you as a brand have expressed very clearly on your website that you’ve said no to many things in terms of the formulations. So like no parabens, no silicon, no cruelty, no harmful compositions. And I was thinking, that’s all well and good, but there’s still a lot of disposable plastic, and for such a new brand, what other steps are you taking in terms of corporate social responsibility and sustainability to make sure that this is also addressed on behalf of a consumer who I guess also cares about this?
Siddha Jain:
No, absolutely. That’s a very good question and we are very conscious of it. So I’ll speak to you about it in two parts. One is, in terms of sustainability, there are a few active steps and a few passive steps, which will become active, that we’ve taken. One is, with everything that we create, we ask and question ourselves, “Can we make a biodegradable version of this?” And when we can, we do it. For example, for our face razors, we have a base range of face razors. We also have a biodegradable range of face razors. Similarly, for our disposable razors, we will soon have. So one thing that we do is, for everything that is probably three, four times used and disposed, we question ourselves on the longevity of it and see how we can increase that. So while for razors, the way we do it, is for a system, whether way you can replace the cartridge, we just have made the handle less plastic, more silicon, et cetera.
Siddha Jain:
And we really balanced what can we also decompose or recycle better in India? Because sometimes plastic is actually more recyclable than glass, for example, in India. Because we have the capability creating large impact. Plastic, because it’s used so much, there’s very good infrastructure present to do that. So a lot of people don’t realize that they think they’re buying glass and they think they’re being environmentally friendly, but actually, they just have the guise of being environmentally friendly because when they dispose that glass, there is actually no mechanism to recycle it. So we are very conscious and sometimes these things might seem antithetical, but we are very conscious about each and every choice that goes into it. So one is, as much as possible, make it biodegradable. Second, choose sources and packaging that can be recycled or is already recycled. Third. We are already plastic neutral.
Siddha Jain:
We do this by balancing. Basically, we are at par with as much plastic we consume or disposable. We consume, we give back to. So these are the first, the early steps that we’re taking in terms of sustainability. And it’s a continuous effort. So getting away from doing all with bubble wrap to honeycomb wrapping by paper, et cetera. So we take a look at each step in our process and see how we can make it. We used to do plantable cards, everything, so as much as we can from recycle-
Anne V Muhlethaler:
How cool.
Siddha Jain:
We already recycle. We try to see if that can be further made a step forward into making it plant. And in terms of overall purpose for the brand, from a beyond profit perspective, the purpose that we have aligned to is skilling of women and skilling beyond just education. It’s skilling of women for them to be able to get more jobs, for them to be able to get more income. And again, there are two parts. This one is tying up with various NGOs who actively do skilling and to give both active time in terms of investing, volunteering, and helping grow their endeavors and efforts and personally investing time in mentorship for women on a one-on-one basis.
Siddha Jain:
And the, the other part is enabling these things happen at scale within our organization, outside our organization. For example, within our organization, we have a lot of third party partners, say women in the warehouse, women who are store associates, et cetera, whose lives we can impact on a day basis. So how do we create a plan for them to get elevated in their jobs regularly? And the third thing is pure organization level. We’ve been the pioneers of taking a lot of women focus decisions and something like we’ve started menstrual leave where you can get a no questions asked day off during your period if it becomes unsustainable to you.
Siddha Jain:
Periods are a very, again, different journey for everyone. So we have a, we call it timeout, and every person who menstruates is entitled to apply for that and get that in the organization. So for us, I think making women successful is the broad purpose. And then these are different pillars that we do on a big and small scale to be able to enable that. And of course, very regular, day to day formal, informal conversations about this is what it’s really about to be able to execute and live the purpose.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I feel very inspired by that, I have to say. It makes me happy and it makes me excited that there are companies out there that are making strides and creating these changes and who carry this mission of helping women thrive. And I hope that this leaves everybody else listening inspired. I think even in schools, they should give a timeout menstrual day because I remember I would’ve-
Siddha Jain:
I agree.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Needed that when I was a teenager. I wanted to switch things up and talk a little bit about your love of dancing, because I know that wellness and you’ve talked about the importance of being strong and your connection to your body, and I know that you have a yoga practice and we’ll talk about this in a minute, but you love, love, love dancing. And I wanted you to tell me, first, how do you marry this love of dancing and a high powered job of a brand that’s in the middle of a fantastic growth? Do you even have time for dance nowadays?
Siddha Jain:
So I actually, I bring my full self to work. So if I-
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I’m applauding behind the screen. Just saying.
Siddha Jain:
So in every organization, actually, that I’ve been a part of, the one common thing that I have done apart from the job that I was supposed to do is either start a dance club or a dance competition that makes people dance at scale. I love-
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Oh my God.
Siddha Jain:
I love it. [inaudible 01:12:21].
Anne V Muhlethaler:
You know what? My friend Amanda would want to join you for that. That’s so cool.
Siddha Jain:
So I think that is one common thing that I have done. So I do try to… This might seem forceful, but I am always, when I feel that something can add joy and if people can’t see it yet, I think I have the ability to convince people to at least give it a try, at the least, I give it. It’s also because of the-
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I love the fact that you said it can feel forceful. Your energy’s like, “Even if they don’t get it yet.”
Siddha Jain:
In 30 minutes you would know that I was right.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Love it.
Siddha Jain:
Just about dancing. But for example, last year we had a yoga day kind of a practice together. So I did a dance yoga session with everyone. And I do love company offsites because that is a place where you can focusedly try to do interesting things and move teams to dance and come together, et cetera. And we have a very young group and set up here also. So what I’m planning to do, and this is the announcement now is that, I’m planning to do weekly dance classes for everyone. Here I also get to brush up on my own dance, teach other people and also have the sense of community while doing it.
Siddha Jain:
But it was probably slightly easier for me to dance in Bangalore because my entire undergrad dance group was there. So we used to get together and jam a lot more often. Here, I dance either as warm up to a workout or as cool down to a workout, or on just days when I’m feeling low, I just play music and I look in the mirror and I’ll do a random thing. But my general objective is to always do one choreography a quarter. I just have these broad goals.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Sure.
Siddha Jain:
People will have, “I want to read so many books per year.” I will have, “I want to dance to so many new songs. I want to perform. I want to create videos.” And all of that. I over, overdo them on trips and all. So on trips I said, “Let me do three, four dances and I feel happy about it.” And all of that. So that’s how I do balance it. I like to find like-minded people or people who will become like-minded soon once they try it. I help spread the cause.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
That’s awesome. Am I remembering right that you took part in competitions as well? Or am I making this up?
Siddha Jain:
Yeah. Yeah. No, no, I did. I did. Also, one very important part that I forgot is that-
Siddha Jain:
Very important part, I forgot, is that, because a lot of my friends keep getting married or in a big part of weddings is a function called Sangeet, which literally means music and that’s when people sing and dance and come together. Those are also very regular. In fact, I’m going to a wedding this weekend where again, I’ll dance so I get these regular outlets by design on account of my friends getting married.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
How helpful of your friends?
Siddha Jain:
I swear, I’m not kidding there. There are some friends of mine who are already great dancers. With them it’s like, okay we get together in gym, there’re friends of mine who I have, if they’ve invited me to their wedding and I have told them, “Oh, I’m sorry”, I rarely skip a friend’s wedding. I have principally decided that I will never do that. But in the rare circumstances that it’s not possible, the first thing they express is not really anything about me, but it’s about, “Oh my God, and who will do the Sangeet?” Who will set that up? I’m a person beyond the dance.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Beyond my dancing skills. Oh my God, that so funny.
Siddha Jain:
So I’ve had fun experiences.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Oh, thank you so much for sharing that. As you know, the podcast is like me at the crossroads between business and mindfulness and I wanted you to tell us, apart from dance, what helps keeps you grounded? What is it that you do, any rituals, whatever it is, whether it’s physical, mental, what keeps you balanced?
Siddha Jain:
Two things. I think one is conversations with people I love or people who’ve shaped my life in different parts of the journey, is something that keeps me very grounded so be it my best friend who I’ve grown together with or it could be my mentors in this company or in the last company. I’ve been very, very lucky to have people who truly invest in me and I think they’ve played such a strong in both in making me feel grounded and also in lifting me up when I’m down because I don’t know if it’s because I’m a woman and a …, I don’t know what plays a bigger role, but I think women tend to be more perfectionist or more critical in terms of … I think we are just so used to multitasking ever since we are born because we are multitasking risks and hundred other things.
Siddha Jain:
I think it’s so inherent to be able to constantly switch and to be able to constantly want to age than men, more often than not. For example, every dance performance, I would be very actively preparing for the entire thing. The moment it gets done on stage, I will look at the video, I will see a lot of exhilaration on stage. The moment it’s done, it’s again ground zero for me. It’s just again, okay, we’re done. I think many a time there is a self radar of grounding me back. Second, there are times when I need uplifting or ungrounding and those are the times when I seek these people who shaped my life in different days. I think one big grounding factor is just when I speak to these people, when I hear about people’s experiences, it just brings everything you feel into so much more perspective that the days I feel I’m snarky or overly privileged or whatever. I just reminding myself of those conversations really, really helps. I actively try to ground myself with people.
Siddha Jain:
And then the second part is I think what balances and centers me is acts of physical fitness or just doing the small things. For example, when I wake up, I always first make the bed. I think it just sets the tone for, hey, I woke up even if I still laid around for a bit, but when I woke up, I woke up with intent. I immediately did that one small thing and did an activity. I think these very small things of schedule and practice and habit that help bring the grounding back. I think there are these big small things that are a mix and that helps all that. And I’ve also … we’ve spoken about this before, I’ve done with personal, which is a very intensely like inward looking exercise for 10 days straight, you don’t speak to anyone and there’s a very specific type of meditation that you do.
Siddha Jain:
I think that once you’ve done it, of course, even if you don’t, I’m not going to be going at liberty to practice it very regularly but that has remained with me. And being mindful in the little things, eating, I’m actually really chewing and eating and enjoying or experiencing each flavor. I think just that living in the little moments and nourishing them brings a lot of centeredness as well.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Yeah, you’re right. I think in the courses I give for introduction to mindfulness, one of the most spectacular results of any exercise I lead people to is mindful eating. I give them a raisin, which is the least exciting fruit in the universe and it looks like a mouse dropping, but when you eat it mindfully, suddenly there’s this explosion of flavor and it’s really interesting how you can trigger yourself to reconsider the experiences that you can have by your senses when you pay attention.
Siddha Jain:
Yeah.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
We’ve talked already quite a lot and I’m about to come to my closing questions, but before I get there, is there anything else that you wanted to share with our listeners?
Siddha Jain:
No, I’m very, very good.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Okay, cool.
Siddha Jain:
We’ve covered everything.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
What is a favorite word of yours? One that you could tattoo on yourself, and I’m not saying you have to, but a word that you can live with.
Siddha Jain:
I already have two different word tattoos on my body. The first one is at the back of my neck, it’s a lotus, and on the stem is written my mom’s name in Devanagari, which is the script of Hindi, her name is Rajeshree, that is of course the first word that I decided I could live with for the rest of my life, which is her. And she’s the stem of the lotus so it means that a lotus always rises in damp and unruly, seemingly impure water.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Yes.
Siddha Jain:
That was a representation and she sort of the stem that has enabled this lotus to blossom. That’s one word.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Beautiful.
Siddha Jain:
The second word that’s already tattooed is “go live”. It’s very simple, but it’s like it just life and living it, is, I think probably life and joy would be the other two words I could happily tattoo and also part of the third tattoo that is also I’ve decided with also a word, but it’s in Sanskrit, it means Aham Brahmasmi.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I know Aham Brahmasmi.
Siddha Jain:
Yeah.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
You may want to explain it for our listeners.
Siddha Jain:
Yeah, so in a very simple word it means I am the universe and the universe is me. I think, yeah, so these just mom, life and universe.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Oh, that’s beautiful.
Siddha Jain:
Which is for me all three connect.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Of course. And I have to tell you, thank you for being the first guest I have in 45 episodes that actually has a tattoo.
Siddha Jain:
Oh wow.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Nobody else. I’m very surprised.
Siddha Jain:
Yeah, I think that should be now a qualifier. Do you have a tattoo?
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Now, what does connection mean to you?
Siddha Jain:
Very, very deep question. I have to really think about it. I would probably describe what looks like a connection. I think eyes are the window to people’s souls and for me a connection is when two pairs of eyes or however many pairs of eyes spark. I think the visual description of a connection is this gazing into each other’s windows and finding that spark in any small, big conversation, like showing your soul even for a second to the other person, I think is my basic definition of a connection. Sometimes it takes only a few minutes to build that. Sometimes it takes years to build that. But I think the moment it’s built, it’s very beautiful and I think true connection happens when there’s a certain part of your soul that you reveal through words or action or gestures to the other person.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
I am so glad I asked you that question. I must tell you, I’m in the middle of writing my first book and it came out of writing an article called Why Meditate? And after asking myself, why meditate, why meditate? And I asked, why me, why now, blah blah, blah, blah. I came to the conclusion that it was the path to connection. I have to tell you that after months and years of practicing meta, loving, kindness, meditation, the first thing that happened to me is that my eyes was seeking other people’s eyes. It’s very hard to explain to people because it sounds weird because when you start noticing that you want to make contact with absolute strangers down the street, but I’m so glad I asked you that, that makes so much sense to me. That’s amazing. Completely different question. What song best represents you?
Siddha Jain:
My knowledge of English song is very less.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
It does not need to be English, it needs to be your song.
Siddha Jain:
Trying to remember. A lot of Bollywood songs are very dimensional when it comes to romance or heartbreak, but I think one song that could possibly describe me actually would be Star Boy.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing. I just recently put together my first playlist with everyone’s answers from the podcast, so I’ll add that to you and I’ll send it.
Siddha Jain:
Amazing.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
And it’s very eclectic so I have to say.
Siddha Jain:
If you look at the song and then if you’ve see the full video, he has two different identities in that song and while he’s reflecting on one identity, taking over the other identity, I personally feel that I have a lot of facets that different people take different conclusions from. And maybe I am also exploring them, but yes, I’m a mother fucking Star Boy, that’s the bottom light, whatever else it is, but yeah.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Oh, that’s lovely.
Siddha Jain:
We shall always be the star and protagonist of our story, is primarily why I think I chose this song.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
What is a secret superpower that you have?
Siddha Jain:
I think listening, I think people confide in me very, very naturally. I think the ability to make people either feel heard or feel comfortable about even very deep things is something I’ve realized very recently is probably my biggest superpower.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Thank you for sharing. What is a favorite book that you could share with us?
Siddha Jain:
There’s so many to choose from. I love A Man Called Ove. It’s based, it’s a Swedish, it’s an English novel, but it’s written by Fredrik Backman and it’s set in Sweden. It does a very good job of exploring very complicated relationship between people and then it goes very deep into the layers beyond the first impression, et cetera. Even I mentioned there’s so many lovely books. This could also be recently. But I think this book is so simple, it’s so beautiful in its exploration of people first impressions and how they could unlayer and completely change your lives or it’s about a man who’s lost his wife and he feels he’s lost all purpose in life. And then when you didn’t expect, he finds purpose in his neighbor in very new thing that … and basically he finds purpose through other people showing kindness and love when probably he thought he didn’t deserve it. I think that’s a very fundamental behavior and character trait. All of us in the end just seek love and I think the way it describes you as being able to get closer to that feeling of love is what makes it beautiful.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
And you’ve convinced me I’m going to buy it.
Siddha Jain:
It’s a lovely book.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
It sounds really, really gorgeous. Where is somewhere that you’ve visited that has really had a strong impact on who you are today?
Siddha Jain:
I would have to say Kenya. I went there for a project. I spent three months there. I think it has impacted me in three ways. One is before Kenya, I had actually not been to another developing country apart from India, I had been on exchange term to Europe and the developing countries of Europe are also far ahead. So it’s a different kind of experience. In Kenya, I think that was probably a slightly lesser developing country compared to India. I had a notion of, because I knew the Indian context, I had a notion of no, this is how certain system then expectation out of the place would be. Of course when we went, we were told not to go in these areas, this might happen, this might happen. There is a lot of, of course crime, et cetera, news around the country. I was in Nairobi. What really was impeccable is it was the country of extremely joyful people. It made me realize how language or music can play inherent role in making you feel happy.
Siddha Jain:
I think certain languages are inherently sweeter, happier, and kinder. I could sense it in their tone. They would speak in a very single song, they would always have a lovely smile. They would always, every cab driver, everyone would have a very specific playlist, would dress brightly and happily. And I realized that no matter the resources or the means, you can still make your life colorful and amazing. That is one I absolutely love that about the country. Second, is actually I had a very deep realization about India and what India lacks in developing faster, was that in Kenya I would be stuck in three hour traffic jams. But even then no one would break a rule. No one would honk a horn. No one would break the queue. No one would get agitated. And in India, if you’re stuck in … even if the signal is green and the person in front of you, you know the person is about to move, but you’ll still keep honking, blasting out of your mind. It’s so irritating.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Girls, it’s the same here, and it’s Geneva, Switzerland. Let met tell you, it is not Bombay and I’ve been there, I’ve been in the three or four hour car journey. Yeah, it’s interesting. So it’s a lot about human spirit, isn’t it?
Siddha Jain:
Yeah. And I also realize that, and whenever I have these trips outside of when I come back to India, I have these deep philosophical discussion with myself, there will be seven, eight days where I’d be like, “Oh my God, why can’t we do it? Why can’t we not honk?” And then I contemplate very deeply. I do like a full analysis and then I realize it all comes down to the population, the supply on demand. In India, I wasn’t grown up. There’s been a lot of supply, very little demand so everyone thinks that if they are not going ahead, then they’re falling behind. And that has become such an inherent trait of everything that you want to be the first in the queue, you want to be the first one to get of traffic, you want to be the first one to get somewhere. I mean, everyone’s going there. Can you tell them that I’m going, that’s not what a horn is for.
Siddha Jain:
But I got a very deep understanding of the psyche of why at a country level people could behave in this manner. It’s because for years and years there’s been a scarcity of, be it job, be it demand, and there’s just been so many people. Everything is like, if thousand jobs wipe out, thousand new, 10,000 people who can apply for the jobs will come about, right? I think that was the second realization is that these fundamental structures of countries get impacted by things of this nature, individual choices together you will lay it into this whole thing, which it takes decade and millennial to solve.
Siddha Jain:
But that was the second and the third is funny, but that was the first time I realized there was a dry hair industry. I might seem very unaware because in India there aren’t many African individuals, so I did not know the hair condition. And the company that I was servicing at the time was a dry hair company, which would do weaves and braids, et cetera so they were the first realization that, oh, people have to go to that great and expend to conform to that definition of beauty that there was a time when I was actually offered to chop off my hair for a couple thousand dollars and I was like, oh my god, my hair, dear hair, I have taken you for granted. Never again. There are people in this whole continent where it’s so sort … it’s like how fairness is in India for the longest time, everyone even now have a natural inclination towards fairer skin means more beautiful, et cetera. It’s the same thing, but it’s for hair and I was amazed at and also grateful for the simpler thing like hair, which I used to take for granted.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing. I love your philosophical analysis. It’s very eye opening. Lastly, my favorite final question, what brings you happiness?
Siddha Jain:
Such a deep question. This conversation has made me so deeply contemplative and I’m so thankful for you for that. I thought about this question very recently. I think for me, happiness is being able to bring joy to people around me. It’s very external, but I realized that a big part of me feels happy when I’m able to play a small part in probably not the happiness, but in the day to day joy of other people’s lives. So yeah, so I think that is what brings me happiness.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Thank you so much for sharing. See it was such a pleasure to talk to you. I’m thrilled that we were introduced. It was a really wonderful interview. If people want to interact with you or get in touch, where can they find you?
Siddha Jain:
I think easiest would be email. I’m on LinkedIn as well, so that’s probably not very active, but I’ve like typed out my email. But yeah, LinkedIn is also good.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
That’s awesome. Well thank you so much.
Siddha Jain:
Well, thank you Anne. I think very rarely our conversations so deeply reflective and so cathartic in their own beautiful way that it’s lovely to step back and reflect on who you are as a person along with the business side of things. Thank you for such a great conversation and for such, for making me think about things that I probably wouldn’t have very actively thought about lately. I it’s been lovely.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
It’s my pleasure.
Siddha Jain:
I’m so thrilled as well.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Yeah, me too. I’m really excited for everyone to find out more about you and to listen to this. I think that they’ll be really inspired by your path and I’m so excited about all of the other things you’re going to be doing in the future. We are going to have to keep in touch. That’s a must.
Siddha Jain:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
And hopefully we’ll meet one day in person. That would be such a pleasure.
Siddha Jain:
Yes, please, yes. Amazing.
Anne V Muhlethaler:
Thanks again to Siddha for being my guest on the show today. As always, you can find all of the relevant links of what was mentioned in this episode in the show notes. You can head over to the website annevmuhlethaler.com or you can also just check the Simple Cast website, which hosts the podcast. Friends and listeners, thank you again for joining me and if you’d like to hear more, you can subscribe to the podcast on the platform of your choice. If you’d like to connect with me, you can do so @AnneV on Twitter or Anne Muhlethaler on LinkedIn, or even @_outoftheclouds on Instagram, where I also share daily musings about mindfulness. You can find all of the episodes of the podcast and much more on the website annevmuhlethaler.com. If you don’t know how to spell it. That’s also in the show notes. If you would like to get some regular news, you can also sign up for my monthly newsletter. That’s it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening to Out of the Clouds. I hope that you’ll join me again next time. Until then, be well, be safe and take care.