Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: The third story of this three-part series celebrating women entrepreneurs on the occasion of International Women’s Day 2022 is of Aakanksha Bhargava who runs Gurugram-based PM Relocations that offers packing and moving services, vehicle shifting, storage, and more. Even as Covid pushed businesses to enhance digital engagement, it had also tested the determination of entrepreneurs to survive. Having served corporates like Airtel, Aditya Birla Group, Bajaj Finserv, Indigo, Bosch, ITC, actor Swara Bhaskar, and more, Bhargava was out of business during Covid much like other entrepreneurs across sectors excluding essential items as the government had restricted movement of goods and vehicles. Started in 1986 by Bhargava’s father, the business, which had shifted more than 2.5 lakh homes, suddenly became redundant.

Read the first part of the series: Women’s Day: How this entrepreneur at 22 went from losing most of her clients to working with Carrier, Blue Star, Voltas, more today

Read the second part of the series: Women’s Day: Forced to resign from her job on maternity grounds, this entrepreneur now exports baby wraps to 57 countries

To stay afloat, particularly during the second wave of the pandemic last April, Bhargava ended up piggybacking the boom in critical healthcare infrastructure such as oxygen concentrators across the country. The company integrated itself as the supply chain partner for the NGO GiveIndia to help deliver concentrators door-to-door. “We moved about 10,000 concentrators in 15 days pan India. We never had an experience of doing something like this but when this requirement came to us, we jumped at it,” said Bhargava who had joined the business in 2007.

Another area Bhargava tapped into to survive the Covid period was work-from-home set-up. The company engaged with corporates to deliver office laptops to employees at their locations. “Courier companies also could have done that but they don’t pack laptops at their end. So, businesses needed someone who could pack and make last-mile delivery. We immediately got into it as we had to find ways to survive. We were already in touch with corporates to see what business can be done with them,” she added.

Accenture, EY, Amazon, HCL were some of the large businesses Bhargava worked with to deliver laptops during the pandemic. However, with Covid subsiding gradually, her business of moving goods has also recovered back to pre-Covid levels.

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The biggest learning for Bhargava from the pandemic was the ability of quick decision-making. “As an entrepreneur, you would have very limited time to make a decision during a crisis situation. In our case, we could not have waited to develop new processes to move concentrators or laptops,” she added. In 15 years since taking over the control, Bhargava grew the business from around 40 employees to 600 currently and Rs 1.9 crore turnover to Rs 100 crore.