As an immigrant, founding [rental app] By Rotation and building it out has been hard. Sustainable fashion is still a very white space. I don’t think I was very welcomed as an outsider of the fashion industry anyway, and then as someone who’s South Asian, and not British, [people would question] how could this South Asian woman think that she’s fashionable enough to run that fashion rental platform?
[There are all these] micro-aggressions. Someone who was giving me advice said, “Why don’t you found a South Asian fashion rental company?” I said, “Why? Because I’m brown? Why can’t I found a business for everyone?” A lot of times people like to put us in a box; I definitely got that feeling a lot in the earlier days.
Unfortunately, the bar is set higher for female founders and founders from underrepresented and minority backgrounds. [When it comes to] early stage funding, I think there needs to be some sort of positive discrimination in investment guidelines, where they will allocate 10 per cent of their funds to ethnic minorities or to female founders [for example]. There’s too much lip service being paid to female and minority founders.
I do think there is no shortcut to working hard, but the problem is – when Molly-Mae Hague says we’ve all got 24 hours in a day, or Kim Kardashian says “get your f*king ass up and work” [comments both have since apologised for] – we’re not acknowledging the fact that unfortunately we do not all have the same level playing field. That’s when people feel inadequate, and [think] “Why can’t I achieve this?” The reality is I’m still very privileged compared to a lot of others, who, frankly, might not even be able to afford a laptop, but want to grow a business.
The [problem] with girlboss culture is it [can make it] seem like “I’ve done this all on my own – no one else has helped me”. There’s a lot of forgetting the fact that it takes a village to be this boss that you project yourself to be. And because of social media, being a founder or entrepreneur seems very glamorous. I’d rather be an authentic role model and leader. Some days are hard, and this isn’t my entire life. Wanting to found a company is not the easiest thing to do, to be honest.
I feel very grateful and humbled that our [investors] think that By Rotation is a concept and a product that can, and is already, transforming how people are consuming fashion. It’s amazing to see that we now have over 200,000 users, mostly women, and they use the app almost every day. [But] the reality is most start-ups fail after three years – that’s just the stats.
We need people who have made it a bit further in their career to be the ones opening gates to others. They can do that by not putting these highlight reels on social media and saying that anyone can do it – because that’s not the truth.
As told to Emily Chan.
