It was a calling to make a valid contribution to the business world that led Sukhi Jutla to leave her corporate life and become an entrepreneur.
Upon securing a highly sought out graduate position with a top US investment bank, within a few weeks Sukhi Jutla knew it wasn’t the place for her. Sukhi Jutla found she didn’t actually enjoy working for banks. This then led her into management consulting which she enjoyed much more and after 5 years she set up her own financial consultancy company.
After a few years, Sukhi decided she wanted to leave banking altogether and work on something that allowed her to use more creativity and have a greater sense of freedom over her lifestyle. She also became quite disillusioned with the corporate way of life. She found the 9-5 grind boring and stale. She also discovered the bigger the organisation, the slower they are to adapt to changes and make changes and this frustrated her. She wanted to do more than just wake up and go work and come home. She actually wanted to enjoy her work and feel like she was making a valid contribution.
During her time on the corporate ladder, Sukhi tinkered around with multiple different business ideas that she worked on during her lunch breaks, after work and on the weekends. That’s where her entrepreneurial streak started to show up.
During this time, Sukhi wrote and published three books (using her lunch breaks to write the first draft!), re-trained as a life coach and started two other ventures in the jewellery space before settling onto MarketOrders; so, it has been a nonlinear journey to get to where she is today. That is how she came to being an entrepreneur today as the COO and Co-founder of MarketOrders.
Besides, Sukhi has been an award-winning entrepreneur for her proactive approach towards business. She is named as Top 100 European Digital Pioneer, Top 100 Woman in Tech, and ’35 Women under 35′ to look out for, to name a few.
An Award-winning B2B platform
MarketOrders is an online global marketplace for the gold and diamond jewellery trade industry using new technologies to bring transparency, speed and trust to supply chain processes. The company is developing a blockchain-based marketplace and provenance chain, specifically focused on helping retailers source the gold products they need more efficiently and at better prices, turning the traditional gold jewellery supply chain model upside down by digitising every element of the customer journey.
For the first time, retailers can order, pay and have their items delivered securely online. Over 90% of small, independent jewellers have limited or no online presence and less than 5% of the major suppliers have online capabilities that allow their customers to order, purchase and track products. The industry is old fashioned and lagging.
Most retailers wait for a wholesale salesperson or distributor to visit them in store, in order to see the product range and place an order. Digitising every aspect of this supply chain creates scalable efficiencies through the entire operational process. MarketOrders provides an online and seamless end-to-end transaction process for all retailers, suppliers and manufacturers.
Leading a New Dawn for the Jewellery Industry
The changes MarketOrders is bringing about in its industry is helping the jewellery trade to buy the products they need with trust and confidence online. The company wants to bring this industry online as it has been slow to adapt to digital transformation and it hopes its digital first approach will help to lead to a new dawn for the industry.
Having a Solution-focused Mindset
Sukhi loves that her every day is a new challenge. She learns something every day. She finds the tech development equally exciting and the way her company is disrupting an outdated industry. The difficult part is that when running a business there will always be things one would come across one has not faced before so he or she needs to be good at making quality decisions fast and troubleshooting most of the time. Sukhi is of the opinion that it’s vital to have a solution-focused mindset and this is what will help her company to sustain and expand its market share in the future.
A Take on Leadership
According to Sukhi, impactful leadership is about being inclusive and leading from within. She believes good leaders must practise what they preach and do what they say. They are the primary example setters in the company so it must start with being the employee you want to recruit to your company.
Secondly, leaders should have the ability to cultivate an understanding that their team are all on different levels of understanding and motivation so having to really understand what motivates each employee and being able to provide that for them. Most people see leadership as the person standing at the front giving orders but what Sukhi learnt was that true leadership is about being at the back and observing and most importantly, listening.
She advises emerging leaders to lead with their gut and intuition. She asserts, “Too often we can look outside of us for advice and mentorship – which is OK up to a certain point. So, don’t be afraid to make tough decisions and to trust your gut when you have a strong feeling about something.”