“If you cannot explain it simply, you do not know it well enough.”
Neeraj Gupta is a Managing Director at Shrivra and CEO at Salonist (product of Shrivra). He began his first business in 2011. Since then, he has built a portfolio of IT services, SaaS products, and more.
Proceeding to work on certain portfolios, he understands the loopholes that Salon & Spa is facing regarding managing appointments, staff payroll, staff performance, client management, and other activities. Then, he began a small startup enterprise – Salonist.io. And presently, they have built a fabulous reputation in the market. This solution intends to streamline the issues faced by salons or spa operators.
Give a brief overview of Salonist
We want to provide an effortless business management experience to salon owners. So they focus on offering perfect service rather than wasting customers’ time.
Salonist is a cloud-based solution that identifies the needs of spas, salons, yoga studios, tanning salons, and wellness industries. This core salon software allows a spa or salon to improve its operations and revenue. It also automates regular activities and grows profits.
This exclusive software is also featured with online appointment booking, built-in marketing, a CRM, mobile solutions, analytics, reports, and more.
What’s the backstory, and how did you get the idea?
I started a firm, Awebstar Technologies, in Singapore and grew the corporation to an excellent extent.
One of my friends runs a salon in Paragon Mall, Orchard Road, Singapore. Whenever we met for lunch or dinner, he was always in tension because his business was going down and his staff was not entertaining the clients. Then, we scheduled the other meeting with one of his friends, and he was also facing the same issue. So I decided to help my friend and other SME’s with the solution that can assist them in managing their salon activities. So, this is how I introduced the Salonist.
Challenges you have faced in your journey till now
We are constantly in the process of helping the SME’s and multi-location salon chains transition via Salonist. Helping and moving a large network of salons and spas is the main motive. So, Salonist can help to increase their revenue and manage their daily operations.
Moreover, businesses needed reliable, unique cloud-based CRM software. Most of the solutions on the market were built in the 90s and use old technologies.
If we compare these solutions, the results are striking, with various differences that go beyond the POS system.
But our Salonist’s cloud software offers marketing abilities, analytics, reports, and mobile apps that are not available in the old systems.
What was the biggest challenge you overcame?
We have various tools and processes through which we train our staff and support them in switching over to Salonist. All our C-level executives, center managers, and front desk staff are delighted with the development.
In addition to this, we design Salonist to improve and scale salon businesses across the world. Our solution is particularly about providing maximum productivity through blogs, videos, and articles. It is important to let our clients know that being a salonist makes it easy to perform daily operations and succeed as a leading business.
What tools & resources do you use and want to recommend?
We use Jira / Trello to manage our tasks and goals. I am following ZOHO and love how it operates. My motivation is ZOHO, and we are continually adding more products to our add-ons so we can help users enhance and grow their businesses through our product suite.
How do you deal with stress and anxiety?
Normally, I don’t feel stress or anxiety because I love to work on a priority basis. We always work in a happy and comfortable environment to manage the stability of both my team and my partners.
But when I feel stressed, I go to meditation, surf, or travel. The overall aim is to allow our team, by giving them amazing moments of fun, to uplift their moods towards work.
What are your final thoughts?
Of course, we’re implementing various plans to see the positive side of Salonist. We are improving our product features, increasing our team, and correctly optimizing our services. We assume that all these elements will make us stronger than we have been before.