#ShareTheSpotlight: Amply's Anshika Parihar on resilience and trusting the process

Figuring out what to build at Amply. I didn’t really have a preference on corporate vs start-up after my graduation. When Anshul, my co-founder, came to me with the idea of building Amply, it felt as a natural next step to explore something new. The difficult part came one year down the journey when we were still unable to figure out the product market fit for Amply. The pressure started mounting on where you go into a self-doubt spiral almost every next day. That I believe has been the biggest professional challenge of my career till date where both Amply and I were going through an existential crisis.

But immense gratitude to the wonderful team we’ve built that we found the motivation to keep pushing on day after day and decided not give up on our venture. Anshul has this one quote written at our office in bold – “you keep hitting the ceiling long enough that it finally breaks". And that’s exactly what we did – chased the clients long enough that Amply finally found a very strong product-market fit and unleashed a huge market demand.

It's imperative for a founder to be resilient, not give up and trust the process. And, as a part of that process, I strongly believe seeing rejections in a positive light is undoubtedly the most important skill you acquire while building a start-up and I’m glad to have learned it to some extent.

Building Amply as a product to what it is to today is something that I am very proud of. However my biggest personal achievement is assembling the team behind it. We have some really wonderful folks at Amply who are highly driven, hard-working and wizards at their line of work. When you’re building a start-up then I think you spend more time with your team than with anyone else. Therefore, it’s really important to build a team with a strong culture that motivates each other to work towards that vision. For me, to help them believe in the vision has been the most important and fulfilling part of my job.

I’d love to share the spotlight with Bani Singh and Drishti Gupta, founders of Now&Me.I met them during Google for Startups Accelerator Program and their starting up story felt really close to the heart. They launched Now&Me during their college days, a choice that I consider exceptionally courageous for a young graduate. Bani and Drishti chose to tackle a highly sensitive and crucial issue of mental wellness and have executed it beautifully. Their approach to bringing well-researched awareness to this topic and providing responsible support through the platform shows the level of accountability every founder must have.

I absolutely love how they’ve organically built Now&Me’s SEO and online presence from scratch. In the initial days of your start-up, money is definitely one of the main bottlenecks to your marketing ambitions. I think it’s really necessary for founders to first get their hands dirty in building a strong base organically. For us at Amply, this has also been instrumental in fine tuning to what our customer really wants in the product.

Both Bani and Drishti have been my go-to people for advice and support in the start-up community. Their venture Now&Me is a brilliant vision and more important than that, they are doing a great job executing it. The kind of entrepreneurs we need in today’s age, kudos.

Read More:#ShareTheSpotlight: Marriott International's Khushnooma Kapadia on empathy and challenges of starting from the bottom

Note to readers: Storyboard18's Share The Spotlight aims to highlight inspirational stories of women who continue breaking barriers and setting the precedent for other women marketers, entrepreneurs and communication specialists.

The initiative aims to kick off a movement where people from across these communities step up and share their spotlight with other women.

Share The Spotlight calls on us all to come out and share words of praise and encouragement for each other, appreciating and acknowledging the contributions of so many people who make businesses, brands and workplaces better. Learn and understand how to face challenges and seize opportunities while bringing along others on the path to progress.

This is just the beginning of a long journey to spotlight individuals who are empowering others and bringing change and growth for all. Together we rise.