The pandemic killed her maiden venture. But the cofounder and CEO is now living her entrepreneurial dream with FitBudd
Saumya Mittal, Co-founder and CEO, FitBudd
Image: Madhu Kapparath
November 2021, Gurugram. “So how do you manage your responsibilities at home?” asked the person sitting across the table. Saumya Mittal, the mother of a toddler, stared at the venture capitalist (VC) in stunned silence. It was a funding pitch, the chemical engineer from IIT-Delhi was into the early months of her second venture, and with the kind of background Mittal came from—over eight years at Cairn Oil and Gas—the entrepreneur was right in wondering if the person asking the question had gone out of his mind. “I was 100 percent sure he would not have asked this to any male founder,” recalls Mittal, who co-founded a fitness SaaS platform for coaches along with Naman Singhal in May 2021.
After a few fleeting seconds, Mittal continued with the conversation. “What you mean to ask” she paraphrased the question, “is how I manage my responsibilities at the company. Right?” Without waiting for an affirmative nod, she boldly replied. “Just to clarify, I’m the CEO, and I manage growth, sales and business,” she underlined. There is a co-founder, she underscored, who takes care of the other aspects of the business.
This was, however, not the first awkward moment for Mittal. The founder, who started a mobile-first online photo printing platform Pixylz in August 2019, was used to more embarrassing scenarios. Sample this. “Will you continue to be the CEO or the co-founder will take over in the future?” was another such question from a funder. “What makes you think that I will step down?” Mittal retorted.
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In yet another funding conversation, most of the questions were directed towards her co-founder. “I am the CEO, and I am also here to answer your queries,” she snapped back. For over a decade in the corporate world, Mittal made a name for herself by excelling in a male-dominated sector of oil and gas. “I always believed the only way to succeed was to have a good education,” she says. “That’s how everybody excels. Right?” she asks.
(This story appears in the 24 March, 2023 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)