As an Entrepreneur, Richa holds a long term vision of launching a premium coffee brand in India through her new venture and cultivating a reading culture in cafes in India.

Richa Sharma is the CEO and Founder of The Book Café based in Jodhpur.

Richa was born in Bhilwara but had spent her childhood in Jodhpur. Richa loves reading books which have been her favourite friend since she was a kid. She says that one should motivate children to read since books take you to the other world that helps instil creativity in you and builds up knowledge.

Richa completed her M.Sc in Microbiology from Jai Narain Vyas University, Jodhpur. She shares that while pursuing her graduation, Richa also prepared for CAT securing a good percentile and luckily got into Symbiosis Institute. However, owing to family issues she had to come back to her hometown and enrolled herself in M.Sc at Jodhpur. While pursuing her post-graduation, Richa got married.

To up-skill herself, Richa started learning programming and also did some work related to Marketing and HRM. She also contributed to her husband’s company for five years. Richa says that to identify your true calling one needs to recognize your interests and pursue them accordingly. Realising her passion and her love for book reading, Richa started her own cafe in 2017. She observed that there are not many functional libraries in Jodhpur. So she ventured to create more space for new books in her cafe and by providing a platform for people to network better. Further, Richa aims to explore expanding her cafe network to new states in her professional journey.

In her career journey, Richa was shortlisted by Goldman Sachs among ten thousand entrepreneurs. She also got selected for the ‘Entrepreneurship Executive Program’ at IIMB which gave her a chance to partially live her dream of being in the IIMs. Currently, she is pursuing a ‘Women Ambassadors Program’ from the Indian School of Business.

Talking about her challenging times, Richa shares that since she got married at the age of 21, she found it difficult to manage her household and education together. On the professional front, Richa had to strive to create an identity for her venture in order to gather vendors and provide training to her staff. However, she is grateful for the support from her family members at a time when she faced criticism and no one believed in her goals.

Richa starts her day quite early and goes for Callisthenics to rejuvenate herself. In her free time, she indulges in book reading.

Richa’s biggest achievement was when her brand gained social recognition along with receiving many accolades. Richa recently received the ‘Best Entrepreneur of the year for Food and Beverage Award, 2021’ from the Bombay Stock Exchange. She was also named the ‘Best Entrepreneur of the year’ by the Jodhpur Food Awards. Richa was also featured in The Times of India, Dainik Bhaskar and Your Story. Her cafe is also incubated in NSRCEL of IIMB.

Richa, who lost her father early in life, draws inspiration from her mother who brought her up and admires her never say die demeanour. She considers Kiran Majumdar as her role model and wishes to imbibe her footprints to grow her business better.

Richa’s Success Mantra is to never give up on the idea that is constantly there in your mind and pursue it with full dedication to be unstoppable. She aims to introduce different varieties of premium coffee through her cafe and has a long term vision to launch her venture as the next Starbucks of India.

As a message for Young India, Richa says that hard work pays off and advises them to create a new skill set besides their basic education. She adds that the youth should study the market and research well about their products and the price that people are willing to pay for them.