Farhana Preeti, Head of Business Development of Shajgoj Limited, the leading top beauty personal care e-commerce platform in Bangladesh.

It was never on the cards for her to work in the corporate sector, or even doing a job outside of the home due to her family circumstances. But being born into a business family has given her some sort of in-person business experience since she was a child. Farhana started her journey as an entrepreneur by inheritance at a very young age after her parents passed away. When she was given an opportunity to work on things which mattered to her, she started working very passionately as the beauty sector has always fascinated her. Eventually, she found herself working for Shajgoj Limited as a freelance writer. Soon she started working full-time there as the Creative Content Manager, and gradually got promoted as Content Head. When Shajgoj started its e-commerce journey, she became a part of it very organically, and eventually became the Head of Business Development where she look after the Product Wing, the Offline Marketing alongside the Influencer Marketing & International Partnerships. She has been working at shajgoj for around 6 years. Apart from that she does independent business consultancy internationally as well. 

Farhana have found her passion pretty later in her life, she would say when she was about to enter her 30’s. Building something from scratch gives you a rewarding feeling, and she absolutely loves that. She loves people and loves to be a tiny part of people’s journey. Helping someone to achieve his/her goals is a rewarding feeling. She loves to communicate with people, meets new people and learns about their culture and their journey. 

Unfortunately, in most parts of the world, only mothers are expected to be responsible for taking care of their children. So, its the women, who majorly faces the challenge of keeping the balance between work life & personal life. It’s very rare that a man is being asked that who is taking care of the children while he is away for work, whilst this is a very common question for women being asked. Thankfully, I have a super supportive family who supports me through my thick and thin. My son is very understanding regarding my career, that also allows me to work & give my 100% dedication towards my work, not thinking about my gender. I am blessed to be surrounded by an excellent support system, my family, the household help we get, the chauffeurs, friends, and neighbors. I don’t try to be over-perfect in every aspect of life, I always put my best foot forward. Over self-expectation is the biggest key to disappointment. I avoid that. She added. 

Shajgoj is Bangladesh’s #1 beauty & personal care e-commerce. They started their journey in 2013 with their content site shajgoj.com with original Bangla beauty & personal care-related content. In the following years, they launched two of their retail outlets in Dhaka, worked on team building, technology and infrastructure during those years and waited for market readiness, e.g., they needed payment gateway options, MFS (Mobile Finacial Service Provider), support from multiple delivery partners to do the last mile home delivery. Once they felt that they were ready, later launched their e-commerce in October 2018. 

In many places, women’s opinions are not taken very seriously, most often they’re judged by the way they look, not appreciated enough for their talent & hard work. There are many occasions, where men don’t feel comfortable enough to discuss business with women. I have faced such problems as well, but not internally, with the external stakeholders during my early days. But things have changed now, people are being more open & they seem to be more accepting. So I appreciate this positive change in society. I undoubtedly consider myself lucky enough to work in such excellent work culture like Shajgoj, where everybody is equally treated & valued regardless of their gender, age and HR (Human Resource) rank. She more added. 

We don’t have any celebrities as brand ambassadors. For us, our valuable customers are our brand ambassadors, they are our celebrities.

They only sell authentic beauty & personal care products and have a big dedicated team of in-house beauty consultants who gives authentic unbiased personalized beauty consultation to any of their customers, completely free of cost. People can get customized beauty solutions by reaching out to them via their social media, hotline or retail outlets. They have already delivered to 87 thousand of villages in Bangladesh. They have an excellent in-house content team who creates thousands of contents for their customers so that they can be their own experts. Their engineers have built the super chique, yet super easy-to-use Shajgoj app, where you can order easily at your convenience and you can get points with each shopping & referrals as well. Content, convenience and curation are the reasons you can choose them to be a part of your beauty & personal care journey. 

Farhana thought that the major advantages of e-commerce in comparison to traditional commerce are curation, content & convenience. If you have a retail store sized 2000 sqft, you wouldn’t be able to fit more than 1200 SKUs in that outlet, whereas you can have lacs of SKUs in e-commerce, so the customers can get more and more variation to choose from them. Currently, the contribution of e-commerce in the beauty & personal care sector is 1-2%, we believe it will be growing to 15% by the year 2030. 

Farhana believes that increased AI (Artificial Intelligence) uses in e-commerce & augmented reality to visualize purchases will be in trend next few years. The payment options will increase and more cashless transactions will happen. People always prefer customization, so giving them more personalized solutions will be in trend, thanks to big data. Voice searching will be more popular, as the generation alpha is taking over. 

They have built long-term brand partnerships with organizations like Unilever, Loreal, Revlon, Marico, Nivea & many more. They believe in a healthy competitive industry ecosystem, so Shajgoj welcomes everyone in this field. Beauty & personal care indeed is a very promising sector.

Almost 50% of the entire population is female, and most of us are only doing household works and not being able to be a part of the national GDP (Gross Domestic Product). The encouragement starts from within yourself, and family. Don’t be afraid to be a part of history. You need to find something you are really passionate about, if your passion follows your profession, then anyone can thrive. And never stop learning, always try to learn new things, and work on being the better version of yourself every single day. Farhana said.

Being empathetic & having humility is very important for any human being. They’re two of the most important qualities if you are managing people as well. The problem-solving optimistic behavior and managing conflicts among team members are very important skills for a manager as well. The art of negotiation, communication, agility & adaptability are also very important skills. She thinks that her leadership style is leading by empowering others, and believes in building a culture where the team feels really empowered. Knowledge & experience sharing is very important, teamwork is very important. That’s how we all can thrive together. She is a full-time parent of a school-going son, and her entire time evolves around him apart from work.