House Sutra: Naga lady builds a house of furniture

Kohima, April 2 (EMN): “I live by the mantra. I am not just a survivor; I am more than a conqueror” says Ovi Yeptho who runs an e-commerce site called House Sutra, an online furniture store based in Bangalore. She says House Sutra is an inspiration from hobbies, passion and real life challenges.

28-year-old Ovi K Yeptho was born and brought up in Zunheboto. She graduated in economics from St. Anthony’s College in Shillong and pursued MBA in Sales and Marketing from Symbiosis Institute in Bangalore. She worked in an IT company in Bangalore also, for two and a half years.

In an interview with Eastern Mirror, she said “In my first job, I was managing channel partners, marketing and a whole lot of planning for the same. However, with time, I wanted to explore solely in the creative side of the role I was already into. Also, I always knew that I wanted to start something on my own. With that decision, I moved to a start-up firm.”

It all started with her fondness for decors and away from home for long, setting up her own space became a necessity. However, the idea was visualise when her Co-founder shared his uncomfortable experience while setting-up his place and they saw this as an interesting problem to solve.

“We started conceptualising House Sutra in November 2015 and executed our pilot run by March 2016. With extensive market research, going on fields for months and getting in touch with our networks for any input and help we can get at that time, we finally launched our operation in Bangalore in May 2016. It was a lot of sweat and disappointment followed by a spark of success that kept us going. With an initial investment of only 5 lakhs, we started as a supplier but soon realised that we need to move to a manufacturer, to have direct control over quality and delivery time.”

“Hence, House Sutra is a story of a company that took wings from hobbies, passion and real life challenges. Currently, we have established a manufacturing unit in Jodhpur and Jaipur. As of now, we are operating in Delhi NCR, Jaipur and Bangalore. Starting by end of this month, we intend to expand to 18 cities. “

“We wanted to choose a generic name for creating a brand. And second, it is catchy and easy to remember. Hence, we decided to name it House Sutra,” Yeptho says.

On her challenge, she maintained “When it is a new venture, the challenges are many which get added with each day. The biggest challenge which I keep on facing is learning not to take failure personally and to being able to start all over again. Sometimes, it is difficult to keep the momentum and you can start falling apart easily and self-doubt kicks in.

“For me, having a proper support system in the form of my family and friends whom I can trust and speak to has helped a lot. Also, I consciously make an effort to take breaks and time-off in case I start feeling burned out.”

Ovi also talked about how she handles the pressure “at the end of the day, it depends on your priorities and what you want to achieve. Irrespective of the place, it all comes down to which monster you want to fight and which ones you want to let go. I believe it is all your choice.”

On being asked why she chose Bangalore, the high-flyer articulates “There are many practical reasons for choosing to start in Bangalore instead of Nagaland”. Foremost, both my Co-founder and I started our career in Bangalore and hence we are familiar with the dynamics of this city which brought us to identify the gap that existed especially amongst the IT crowd and migrants who were our initial target audience.

“Other than Bangalore being the Silicon Valley of India, the logistics solution and digital landscape are already matured in Bangalore; making it easier for us to receive initial traction with less spends in the marketing budget. It makes it easier to expand and scale from here as a base then if I would have done it from Nagaland.”

“While books can never be outdated, the education system that does not support or nurture the formal learning with practicability and application makes us redundant. For many of us, the core issue lies in the lack of employability skills” she bemoaned on Nagaland education .

Taking a note on Nagaland educated unemployment youth; she felt that one of the evident reason could be too much dependence on the government job. “Our people still have a very conventional approach to earning a livelihood. Having said that, there is nothing wrong in that and I believe it is all a matter of how a society evolves and realising the option to contribute from multiple paradigms. However, we have the option to accelerate the process by being open to more options. It is the responsibility and obligation of the young ones to bring these changes in mindset.”

However, she encouraged the youths to not to give up their dream and take a step further ahead. “If you are jobless but still trying, don’t give up. There is no defined rule to reach a goal and sometimes, it takes more time than expected. If you are not trying, we need to wake up and realise that we are the fabric of the family/society. There is no excuse for not trying. We have to start somewhere even if it is a tiny step, we need to start with whatever we have and can. Are we accountable for the time we are gifted with?”