In this second episode of Living with Passion, Rebakah Blank, Brand Head, Fabcafe is taking us through her entrepreneurial journey.
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#LivingWithPassion #WomenEntrepreneur #OutlookMoney #Money #OutlookMagazine #OutlookGroup #RebakahBlank
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NewsTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 it's a great day. (upbeat music)
00:07 - So my name is Rebecca,
00:32 and I grew up in India.
00:34 So my family is from the United States,
00:37 and they moved to India in the early 90s,
00:40 and they settled in Missouri, in Uttarakhand.
00:43 And so I grew up living like a very healthy
00:46 kind of lifestyle, eating mostly kind of local organic food.
00:51 And then later on in life,
00:54 after leaving Missouri and kind of working,
00:58 I started having some more health-related issues,
01:02 which caused me to become very, very interested
01:06 in health and nutrition and cooking especially.
01:09 And so after spending a lot of time researching
01:14 that I was working as a computer engineer actually
01:18 at the time.
01:19 And I realized at one point I realized
01:22 I was spending more time reading about food and cooking
01:25 than I was on my career.
01:27 And that was, I think, sort of a wake up call for me
01:30 that I really wanted to get into the food space
01:34 because it was something that I had,
01:36 through eating healthy, I had started to just feel
01:40 a lot better, feel a lot healthier, have more energy.
01:43 And so it was something that I wanted to share
01:45 with other people.
01:47 So around that time I was planning a health food restaurant
01:51 and Fab India was working on a similar concept.
01:55 And so they got to know about me,
01:58 I got to know about them.
02:00 And we decided that I would come and help them
02:04 with the Fab Cafe concept.
02:06 Now in the beginning it was definitely very nerve-wracking
02:09 and it's always a little stressful,
02:12 but overall it's very, I love being creative
02:17 and so it's an amazing opportunity for me to be creative
02:21 and to share recipes or food or spaces that I create
02:27 with people all over India.
02:29 So, you know, I don't feel that I faced any
02:34 direct discrimination.
02:35 Overall I think that I was very fortunate to work
02:40 with people who were very open-minded
02:42 and very supportive of me.
02:45 But I think overall in the industry,
02:47 when we first started as a company,
02:50 it wasn't until we had 50, 60 employees
02:52 that we had hired maybe one or two other women.
02:55 So I was the only female in the company for first year.
02:59 And then we sort of made a conscious decision
03:03 to try to have more women in our company,
03:08 which is something that we've actually done very well with.
03:12 But I think the original assumption was that
03:16 there's just gonna be more men
03:19 in the food and beverage industry.
03:20 So that's the way people usually think about it.
03:24 We've definitely had a lot of challenges with Fab Cafe.
03:28 And as we've expanded across India,
03:30 there's been a lot of learning for us
03:31 in handling different markets with our food
03:35 and as a restaurant.
03:37 But overall I'm very satisfied with the progress
03:40 that we've made.
03:41 We still have a lot of work to do.
03:42 You know, I think it's really important for people
03:46 to realize that, especially if you're a woman in a space
03:51 that maybe there aren't a lot of women in,
03:55 that you do have a lot of customers that are women.
03:58 And so your voice and your opinions are really important.
04:02 And I think a lot of times women do tend
04:06 to second guess themselves or not speak their mind.
04:09 And I think it's really important for them all to know
04:12 that their opinions really matter
04:15 and are very valuable to the market.
04:18 And so they should just, you know, like get themselves
04:21 out there and be confident.
04:23 (electronic sounds)
04:26 (silence)
04:28 [BLANK_AUDIO]