A burgeoning entrepreneur, Pinky believes that it’s equally important to watch your karma sheet as your balance sheet, as you get what you give.

Pinky Maheshwari is one of the founders of ‘Surprise Someone’. She, along with her mother, started the venture in 2015.

Pinky was born and raised in Jaipur. She completed her schooling and bachelor's in Jaipur itself. She did her master's at Pune University. She also took a course in marketing from MICA, Ahmedabad.

Being the sole child of environmentalist parents, her parents wanted her to do something for the environment. But she was interested in marketing and other related fields. And therefore, after completing her marketing diploma, she joined a marketing company. She worked in the corporate sector for about eight years and also worked for HUL. Later, when she got married, she moved back to Jaipur. Then she worked for Vodafone for about two years.

Talking about what led her to start Surprise Someone, Pinky shares that she had been working for corporations and barely had enough time to spend with her son. Once, she was home and spent the whole day with her son. When her son was playing with papers and scribbling on them, picking one paper after the other, she told him not to waste papers, citing that trees are cut down in the process of making paper. Her son lightly remarked, Then why don’t we make our own paper? She replied to her son, saying that it’s impossible to make paper without chopping down trees. Pinky’s mother, witnessing the scene, replied that it’s not necessary that trees be cut down to produce paper. There are some alternatives, too. She collected cotton waste and created pulp from it. And this is how she created her first paper, and she has never looked back ever since.

Pinky shares that she wanted to convert her idea of making recycled handmade paper into her profession. Initially, she started conducting workshops for children to teach them to make handmade paper, but it was not a process that could last a year. And therefore, she started pitching her handmade paper and paper bags to corporations, and thus she started selling her handmade paper products.

Discussing the COVID pandemic, Pinky says the pandemic affected people and children of all age groups. People lost their jobs. It hampered the studies of children. But instead of worrying about the situation, she thought of finding opportunities in adversity. She says most of her handmade paper products are sold to corporations or used for weddings, but due to the pandemic, corporations were shut down and weddings were not happening. Therefore, to keep the women employed under her venture going, she started making masks with an added touch of creativity to stand out. Hence, she was able to make her venture sustain the pandemic. Besides, she feels that we have overexploited all the natural resources, and the pandemic gave us a reality check.

To aspiring entrepreneurs, Pinky advises that more than any funding or pedigree, it’s your passion and consistency in what you do that matter the most. Besides, don’t run after funding just because other entrepreneurs have gotten their ventures funded. Instead, focus on your creativity and what you believe in to sustain yourself in the long run. Furthermore, she advises that it takes time for things to fall into place, so just hang in there.

Pinky thinks that experience is more important than education. She says that had she not worked for corporations, she would not have been able to scale up her venture at the current pace.

Pinky considers her parents as her role models, among many others. She also takes inspiration from Thomas Edison.

According to her, leadership is about working as a team member and not as a boss. She says being a leader entails infusing the same amount of energy in every team member and making them cherish the vision of the organization as the leader does.

Talking about the struggles she faced in starting up, she shares that her entrepreneurial journey so far has been through a lot of ebbs and flows. She says that once a lady ordered some paper boxes after looking at one of their advertisements on social media, and upon receiving the order, the lady called her back and asked for a refund as she had misunderstood the advertisement and her expectations were different. She suffered some monetary losses, but the learning that she got from it was invaluable. Today also, she journals all her mistakes and commits to not repeating them again.

Pinky believes in cherishing and preserving memories, whether good or bad, whether of failures or successes.

To conclude, she advises people to watch their actions, as what they give, they get back.