Shefali Dadabhoy
Co-founder and Head of Strategy
PhotoConcierge
Quick chat with Shefali Dadabhoy, Member of DWENIndia
What drives you daily as an entrepreneur?
I have always known that one day, I would be an entrepreneur. There is nothing like following your own dreams and going all out to make it work. I’ve had a great corporate career but being an entrepreneur has always been my vision. Having always been interested in visual arts and passionate about photography, PhotoConcierge allowed me to combine both. Being a part of a platform that helps others and knowing that other photographers, videographers and illustrators value what we’ve built is extremely encouraging and motivating.
How do you see women entrepreneurs in India today and how can this community leverage to learn from each other?
Empowerment and opportunity run hand in hand. While, opportunity leads to empowerment, being empowered enables us to find and create new opportunities. Today’s women can balance their professional and personal lives and it’s incredible to see their commitment, passion and drive in both of these. What’s more? The number of women entrepreneurs continues to grow across all sectors. Any success story is one to learn from and fall back on. Every women entrepreneur is inspirational, and a role model to the ones trying to find a foot hold in this day and age.
As an entrepreneur, what is your advice to others who are trying to find a foothold on their own, especially women.
“Entrepreneurship – It’s fun, exciting and comes with challenges and expectations. It needs a lot of perseverance and patience… put your head down, focus and follow through”
Tell us a little bit about PhotoConcierge and the idea behind it
PhotoConcierge is a collaborative marketplace where, till date, 85% of the content is owned, uploaded and tagged by close to 200 contributors across 3 verticals- photos, videos and vectors. Of this, 90% of the contributors are based in India while the rest are from countries like US, UK, Ireland, and Singapore, to name a few. The number of contributors from across the world continues to grow.Our library continues to grow and while we can’t compete with Getty, Shutterstock, Fotolia on the size of their library today, we aim to deliver customized content via the ‘Request’ feature. Through this feature, brands and agencies can define their image request, budget and timeline within which they require media and, based on this, our contributors will create content. Buyers can then pick the asset they like best.
Our vision for Photo Concierge is to be able to provide buyers with any image or video they require from any part of the world. If we don’t have it, one of our contributors should be able to create it.
Profile: Shefali Dadabhoy is a marketer-turned-photographer-turned-entrepreneur. Having taken to photography as a hobby first, she switched gears completely to take it up as a career. Based out of Chennai, India, Shefalii joined PhotoConcierge to be part of an initiative that would build a community of digital artists and showcase their talent globally, particularly Asian content.
