How Simran Lal is Celebrating Indian-ness with Good Earth, Nicobar & Paro Lal's brands have rightfully made great design accessible to young Indians whilst making them feel proud and connected

Creative people are rarely satisfied with their creations. They crave for more, and Simran Lal, Chief Executive Officer, Good Earth & Co-founder, Nicobar is no exception. After working on Good Earth with her mother, she set up Nicobar with her husband and most recently, Paro. Whether it is about retaining Indian essentials or creating products for millennials, Lal has worked towards them all. But how does she manage to balance and keep the identity of all three brands upright? "Because all of them come from the same family with the same intention and the same people. All of them have an understanding commonality and DNA and all three have an element of creating a deep sense of pride in being Indian," she explains. All the three brands are a celebration of India's craftsmanship and heritage.

A Proud Indian
Her brands have rightfully made great design accessible to young Indians whilst making them feel proud and connected. Summing up her brand ideology, Lal says, "The key is to look good, cool and global at the same time. You can be comfortable in your Indian contemporary way of being. So our clothes are very much in context to our culture and our weather."

Talking about working within the family, she says, "It's probably more complicated because it's not just a professional relationship. What's really worked for us is the huge foundation. It's all the more difficult when you don't know the other partner well."

Key Learnings
Whether it is joining a family business, making a mark or carving an identity for your brand, none of it comes easy for any entrepreneur. Talking about her learnings, Lal says, "My biggest learning as a leader is the combination of action, reflection and silence. Take a moment to step back and reflect over what you've done, what went wrong, what went right and the role you played in it. This introspection and truly silencing your mind is an Indian gift to the world - meditation."

Lal's brands have truly been about the right partnerships and collaborations. Explaining further, she says, "When you're looking at shaping culture, you're looking at creating a movement of like-minded values, and you can't do it alone. Sometimes we need a partner that may have more to offer but we take a smaller and the younger one and oftentimes we're the smaller ones which then turns out to be a beautiful collaboration." Going forward, she further plans more such collaborations.

(This article was first published in the March 2020 issue of Entrepreneur Magazine. To subscribe, click here)