This Brother-Sister Duo are Mapping a Brighter Future for Their Legacy Run Business With Gurumukh and Geetika entering the business, the Syska Group is aiming for greater heights.
By Sugandh Bahl
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Gurumukh l 24 l and Gitika l 27 l Uttamchandani, Executive Directors, Syska Group
With Gurumukh and Geetika entering the business, the Syska Group is aiming for greater heights. Started as Guru Nanak Marketing by late Jeevan Uttamchandani, the company initially distributed cassettes, CDs and audio video systems for T-series in Maharashtra. As their business kept growing, they started collaborating with other brands, including Samsung.
Uttamchandani's sons Rajesh and Govind wanted to build their own venture but did not want to get into a business which would give them direct competition. They saw scope in the LED light segment and entered into the business in 2012.
"During the summer vacations, I utilized the time to work with my father and even interned here thrice. Post my graduation, I worked for another company for two years, but later, decided to be a part of the growing business," says Gurumukh, the third generation entrepreneur. Around that time, as his father was planning to expand the vertical, Gurumukh suggested him to get into personal care segment, after doing an extensive market research. "It wasn't easy to convince him to invest into this sector, but it did happen eventually," sighs Gurumukh. In his current role, he handles the day to day strategic planning and operations of the segment, while his sister Gitika has established the digital and social media footprint of the brand. Having pursued industrial engineering, Geetika's job was to overlook the working of their factory.
"From being purely into retail to tying- up with leading e-commerce platforms, and spearheading the social media of Syska, there were a lot of obstacles that I had to deal with," remembers Gitika. Their father isn't much of a tech wizard and initially resisted to the online expansion. But, she single-handedly spearheaded a tie-up with Amazon.
Going further, Syska group is looking to go public in the coming year. They are about to launch their own cables and wires. "We are also in the process of setting up a factory on the Rajasthan-Haryana border," they conclude.
(This article was first published in the July 2018 issue of Entrepreneur Magazine. To subscribe, click here)
