How Covid Helped Me Startup, A Founder’s Story with Sneha Saigal

Sneha Saigal is the co-founder & CEO of G&E, an online marketplace for need-based advice via live 1:1 audio/video calls with experts. A management professional, Sneha’s non-linear career path spans consulting companies and tech unicorns. She is currently building G&E so that everyone can access advice to know what they don’t know, no matter their background or network. Sneha strongly believes in positively impacting communities; right from her college days of piloting prison programs in Grinnell, Iowa to her fundraising efforts at non-profits in Mumbai, India.

Tell us about your childhood and where you grew up

Born and raised in Mumbai, Sneha earned her MBA at IESE Business School in Barcelona where she also became a WSET Level 2 wine sommelier.

How did you get started as an entrepreneur?

Pre-Covid I was heading the global expansion of my family-run business which is in the maritime trade. As a business development and marketing professional, my role largely involved traveling for industry conferences held in Singapore, the U.S.A., Dubai, and so on or networking with potential clients at in-person meetings and events. Obviously, with Covid, these gatherings moved to the back burner which means I had some time to introspect and explore opportunities to figure out what it is that I really want to do in the future. Around mid-2020 was when I decided that I wanted to build a company of my own and while I knew it was the tech space that excited me the most, I was still trying to find the idea and product that was most fulfilling. So I started dabbling with all the things that interested me including content writing or studying wine. It was while brainstorming ideas and navigating roadblocks on how to register a company, hire a lawyer, open a business bank account, find outsourced talent, and so on, that I realized how complex it is to simply find an expert and get on a quick call with them to ask a few questions when you’re stuck. That’s when I decided to build a platform like G&E!

What is one business lesson you would tell a startup founder?

Only appliances come with a manual. Startups are everything but predictable and nothing can fully prepare you for what lies ahead. Often, you have to convince yourself that you’re at the right place at the right time and simply show up every day. Show up for those first 100 users who believed in you!