Suet Huay Loh is the Founder of Best Value Mart. She is a self-motivated and hardworking individual who strives to keep herself updated. She is an entrepreneur who believes in the philosophy of 'giving back' to society and that’s the motive behind starting Best Value Mart. She has done her graduation with a Diploma in Facility Management and then kicked off her career with customer service roles for local developers. Ultimately, she got shifted towards business development roles because she felt the need for better career growth and personal development for her. Following this, she pursued her Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and Management, which helped to broaden her knowledge. 

SPJSGM Mumbai

Suet Huay Loh Profile

Admission Experience

What is your leadership philosophy?

My philosophy of leadership is very simple; I believe in leading a team through a collaborative perspective to achieve winning outcomes. If I talk about my own team, I am always open to new ideas and suggestions coming from my team members during operations before introducing new processes. Sometimes it too can happen that my team could run out of ideas due to some circumstances or workload; in that scenario, I put forward my suggestions on the table to achieve the results needed. 

How has been your journey so far in the e-commerce business?

In today’s competitive world, we all know that e-commerce is not easy at all because you will eventually face some hurdles on your way either directly or indirectly. But along with challenges, it gives you abundant learning opportunities to grow on a personal as well as professional level, and the same is the case with me because I get to learn something new each day. E-commerce is very much essential in our daily life and you will get something new to explore in this business every day. The last year proved to be truly amazing and motivating for me.

Do you think that women still are not that courageous to initiate their journey as an entrepreneur? What are some of the recent developments with regards to this?

Absolutely not, we women can still succeed and shine in our own business. Usually, in the past, the male gender was quite dominating in the field of leadership in companies. But now time has completely changed and we do see a lot of examples where women are very amazingly handling both their family and career at the same time. I admire many female leaders among those who are breaking this stereotype that women look good at home only and they have inspired me to learn from their success stories over the years.

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What challenges came your way while envisaging and implementing your brand?

Putting an idea on the table is the simplest task and making it to the final is the real challenge. For me, during the initial time, the concept turns out to be too much for implementation. While I was planning everything for my business, we hustled a lot to make everything perfect during the execution. I had thought of introducing a minimum of thousand commodities during launch onto the platform. About it did not turn up the way we wanted it to be and we managed to launch only a few final products onto the platform during launch. We hadn’t imagined facing so many difficulties after spending a lot of tie during the planning phase as we encountered a lot of unexpected bugs and errors in the system. We spent our next few months went into troubleshooting those errors and bugs along with the development team. It happened frequently that when I had an idea of how I wanted it to work, I would be informed by the technical team that the system has its limitations and we were unable to execute the plan.

What qualities you do search for in your team?

In my opinion, having a positive attitude is the most crucial factor in my team. It takes nothing much but the presence of the right positive mentality for the team to achieve the goals they set. So far it has been great and I am thankful that the team is motivated.

What are the different transitions you have observed in the last 10 years of your term in the corporate sector?

In this digital world, the adoption of smart technologies over the years has made things very easy and fast. In my time almost 14 years ago, when I started my career as a local developer we have to do most of the work manually. However, in recent years, I have seen companies are now moving towards adopting new systems and doing most of the work in an automated process. From the time pandemic has hit the world with multiple waves, virtual meetings are the only source left with us to interact with everyone be it our corporate people or our closed ones. 

How do you land here from a corporate person to an Entrepreneur and how did you discover it as your goal?

My father always inspired me since a very young age. He has been my motivation pillar and always encouraged me to be an entrepreneur. I always wanted to do something unique which can represent myself, my identity as an individual. During my tenure in the corporate world, I got to learn so many things on how to start a company and what type of resources and network you need to establish it and this is the only reason why I stayed in the corporate world for so many years. I always own accountability for my tasks and that’s why I didn’t ask my parents to help me establish my business. Over the years, I have built up a very strong network of professionals and saved enough money to start my own company with the resources I have. 

How your startup will create a positive social implication?

I believe in giving back to society and it is a positive outcome that makes me very happy when I do so. A certain amount is donated to charitable trusts including both local and global charity organizations, out of our annual revenues which were generated from BVM. We also donate household products and food items to needy families and non-profit organizations to bless the less fortunate families apart from money. We do follow the principle of reducing, reusing and recycling where we reduce paper usage by the printing of delivery orders receipts. We reuse and recycle the product's carton boxes and use them for parcel deliveries. For any product which is having a shorter shelf-life, the team will put it up for clearance sale and also donate it to the local food bank with food items that are more than a month from expiry.

What qualities a successful leader and collaborator should possess?

In my viewpoint, having good communication skills to bring out the full potential of the team is a very crucial thing because the origin of most of the problems is a lack of proper communication. A leader must have the patience to listen and at the same time, to be able to provide guidance whenever necessary. To make the workplace an open environment to communicate thoughts, mutual respect is equally compulsory along with all these factors.

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