“How I Did It” ‐ Shailja featured in Inc. India August ‘09

“I just had to create something that was mine” As managing director of Stellar Search, 39‐year‐old Shailja Dutt finds top managerial talent for corporate in India. But it is her search for talent that is more interesting. She tweets about the positions to be filled, gets her team to blog about them and also taps her Facebook network. While her researchers scour journals and newspapers for names of prospective candidates, she sends voice‐over‐visual email updates to her clients. Her approach clearly works. Not only has Stellar Search reached a turnover of Rs 5 crore in 10 years and opened offices in Delhi, Bangalore and Dubai, 60% of its clients give repeat business. Dutt, however, is unlikely to rest till she has met her goal of getting a valuation of  Rs 100 crore for her business.

AS TOLD TO POOJA KOTHARI

In 10 years, I have created an executive search business worth Rs 5 crore in revenue. In 2006, when the turnover of my company was Rs 2 crore, I was offered a valuation of Rs 20 crore. My plan is simple. I have to drive this business to a valuation of Rs 100 crore. It may seem ambitious, but then, so does my journey this far. I started out in this industry with Amrop International, a global search firm that was among the first to set up shop in the nascent Indian market in the nineties. There was a lot of skepticism then about retainer‐based searches for management talent. Initially, only MNCs gave us business since they were already using the concept in developed markets. It was difficult to convince Indian organizations to this new way of working. However, we started making a dent in the market and I learnt a lot about the business.

In 1998, after my first child was born, I couldn’t get myself to return to my job, despite all the flexibility offered by my employer. I decided to take time out. I was home for about 2‐3 months when during a chat with my husband, the idea of doing something on my own was born.  
A week later, I had found a basement in Adchini in Delhi to set up shop in. I shared it with another company,
which allowed me to share rent in lieu of an executive assistant to man the front desk. My brother lent me a
computer. Stellar Search had set sail.  

During my time with Amrop, I had worked mainly with clients in healthcare and consumer services. They became Stellar’s first clients as well. Within two months, I had hired three people to help me with the business. The journey got harder along the way. Business cycles came and went. There were times when I even paid salaries from my credit card. I had to work hard at staying with my conviction that I will make a name for myself in this business. Many a times, clients would tempt me with offers to join them, instead of struggling with this business.

But I stayed put. I just had to create something that was mine. We faced our first challenge as a firm a few years ago when we were a team of 20‐odd people and our basement office in Vasant Vihar faced the threat of being sealed off by the municipal authorities of Delhi. In our business, information is our only asset. Our data was stored on desktops. If the office was sealed, we would be left with no information and no business.  

We were suddenly scrambling around without a contingency plan. That experience changed the course of this firm. We realized the importance of having a plan B at all times. We constructed desks in other people’s homes, replaced desktops with laptops, provided cell phones to the entire team to remain accessible, and put data onto backup servers. We were ready to walk out with our data whenever the MCD team arrived. In seven days, we grew up as a company.  

Along the way, we built a firm that challenged many paradigms in the search business. The turnaround time for a typical top management search is four weeks. We brought it down to 10 days, and figured out ways to get even leaner. We now get back to our clients within seven days with profiles of suitable candidates.  

We leverage technology like no other player in our field. Our data management systems work on the premise of archiving research, rather than resumes that we have. Our software asks a lot of easy “yes” and “no” questions of our employees to make sure we capture the data in the right manner. We send voice‐over‐visual emails to our clients.

We are currently working with an American firm on recruitment for Wal‐Mart. The firm is blown away by how we use technology. We have a web strategy that comprises blogs, regular tweets, a presence on Facebook, and in future, on Second Life. Our research team works on a proactive basis in picking up names from journals and newspapers, rather than with an assignment focus. We look at the research skills of due diligence companies and equity analysis firms to train our staff at getting more from their research.  

The result has been very satisfying for me. We may be a 40‐people, mid‐sized firm, but we stand apart due to our DNA. We are a passionate bunch of people who love what we do. We have a presence in Delhi, Bangalore and Dubai, and have emerged leaders in the healthcare and infrastructure sectors, from where we get 80% of our revenue. We work in 10 verticals and our relationships are sticky. Nearly 60% of our business is from repeat clients.

We also managed to meet our numbers even in a year as difficult as the last fiscal. In fact, we added seven people to our team.  

I have learnt a very important lesson as a leader. If you want to pull a cart alone, you cannot do a good job. But when you put the weight of your entire team behind that cart, you can make it run. I believe Stellar will fly to a valuation of Rs 100 crore. It’s simply a matter of time.