Meet Chaity Ghosh. She is one of the most bubbly, enterprising, successful achiever who tries to make a success of whatever she touches. She is pretty, charming, modern and ever smiling. Her work includes event-management, corporate branding, public relations, celebrity management and last but never the least, a home-food-delivery business. She runs all this on her own with little help from a small and dedicated staff.
She comes from a middle-class family where everyone else was in service but after a stint at several jobs which equipped her well with experience and skills, she took courage in her hands to venture out on her own.
Let us hear a bit about your background.
I began my career in a multinational organisation DHL. It is a logistics company where I was handling Sales. I was promoted as the Manager within two years where I had my own team. I did not restrict myself to any particular industry and took the challenge of working in varied industries in different positions to gain experience. I then shifted to in a Health Insurance Company when privatisation of Health Insurance Sector was announced under Third Party Administrators. This was followed with a job in a Finance Company. My last job was with one of the largest entertainment companies in Eastern India where my responsibility was to transform a family- oriented business into a corporate structure and position the brand as one of the leading name in the entertainment sector.
What hard and soft skills should a clinical laboratory technologist possess?
Setting up my own business had always been at the back of my mind. After closely observing and working in marketing sectors for more than seventeen years, I gained the confidence of following up on my ambition. Thus, Phreedom4ever or P4E was born in 2012. During my 17 + years working tenure, I handled varied responsibilities such as Sales, Customer Services, Operations and HR. I also developed contacts with big corporate players and well-known social names who appreciated the quality of work I delivered and encouraged my out of the box ideas. Hence those experiences and relationships combined with knowledge of the market and its paraphernalia that I acquired maneuvered me to get into this industry..
You are an ideal mother. How do you balance the two very demanding roles – personal and professional?
In the beginning, it was very difficult to balance the responsibilities. But my mother has always been my biggest and strongest support and that helped me overcome that phase. Slowly and steadily I got into the groove and started adapting to both responsibilities.
You have named your organisation Phreedom4Ever. Why?
The name resonates my own freedom of doing what I always wanted to do and live my dream. And the usage of PH for the spelling of Phreedom is to give more stress on the word freedom, create a difference and make it eye catching.
You seem to run your business with a skeletal staff. How do you do your time management?
Sometimes, 24 hrs seem to be less for me. Actually, it is not necessary to have several fixed employees under our payroll in our kind of industry since we need to hire manpower as per the size of the assignments. However, having worked in corporate sector in senior positions I always believed in a good team and team work. So, from 2013 to 2018, Phreedom4ever had around nine employees which is quite a number in our kind and size of organisation. I always kept my team on the forefront. Unfortunately experiencing few dishonest activities and lessons learnt by blindly believing my employees changed my perception altogether. So now I have decided to be a part of every single activity of the organisation and take the maximum burden on myself. It is difficult but I have to cope with this situation.
Chaity Ghosh making a presentation
Name some of your milestone clients/events and tell us why you consider them ‘milestones?
Our first milestone client was Johnson & Johnson which we acquired just within 5 months of the start of Phreedom4ever. Our other milestone clients are DBS, Mercedes, BMW, Tata Steel(Metallurgy Dept), Godrej & Boyce, Credai Bengal, Bengal Shrachi Group, Allahabad Bank, Century Ply, Ambuja Group to name a few. The association with the said brands helped the Brand Phreedom4ever to enhance our market value and outreach. If I talk about the milestone event of Phreedom4ever, it is our Brand Property “Monologues” which is the only Solo Art Festival in India as per PTI. It is the brainchild of Sujoy Prasad Chatterjee and the production of Phreedom4ever which we started from 2013 and continued till 2018. We wish to start it once again after the situation improves.
You began a homefood delivery business during the lockdown. Is it still running?
Yes, it is still running and in spite of the situation getting better and normal situation coming back, eateries getting opened, we still have regular orders and also special party orders. Friends from abroad frequently order for their family and friends. In fact, we have started making cakes and kababs along with our existing items.
Who would you consider your mentor and why?
I did not have anyone in specific who I can call as mentor because I have learnt from many people and each mistake of mine taught me the biggest lessons. However, I must mention about one of my immediate senior in DHL from who I acquired my leadership qualities and confidence. He was the one who taught me that if we do our best whole heartedly and honestly, we do not have to run after money, Money will follow us…. and till date I follow the same.
Any hiccups you would like to mention over your professional journey?
During my assignments, like everyone I also had to go through lot of office politics but I must say that now I feel that those were my learnings and that helped me move on to where I am today. As far as Phreedom4ever is concerned, I should say I have not gone through major hiccups other than the fact that my employee selection was not correct most of the time due to which I had issues which disturbed the entire business. I had an inclination of working with known people who back-stabbed me resulting in major damages. But I have learnt from the same and have moved on. The major hiccups that we face in Kolkata is the unprofessional attitude and lackadaisical approach of the people here.
What are your criteria for accepting and/or rejecting an assignment?
We generally try not to reject assignments since all clients are valuable to us. However, certain projects which are totally beyond our service areas, instead of rejecting them we try to guide the client to the right agency.
Where do you see yourself five years from now?
This would have been very easy to write before the pandemic but considering the present scenario where we do not know what is going to happen the next day, it is very difficult to write about the future. In fact our industry has been affected so badly that it is like a restart for us if things go smooth.
Chaity Ghosh with Sujoy Prasad Chatterji
Your frank comments on a woman’s ability to efficiently blend marriage, motherhood and career
I feel “balancing” our life is the most important thing that we should work on along with Time Management. If these two are okay everything falls in place automatically. However, we do have to prioritise in life as per situations and phases. I am a huge fan of Indra Nooyi and I really look up to and admire her and learn from speeches about how she performs all her responsibilities as a daughter, a wife, mother and also as CEO of Pepsico.
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Shoma A. Chatterji
Shoma A. Chatterji is a freelance journalist, film scholar and author. She has authored 17 published titles and won the National Award for Best Writing on Cinema, twice. She won the UNFPA-Laadli Media Award, 2010 for ‘commitment to addressing and analysing gender issues’ among many awards.
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