Shalini Khemka puts her people person skills down to moving schools every six months in her early years, with her father’s locum work as an orthopaedic consultant. “I enjoy being with people because I had to keep mixing with new people,” says Khemka.
Her 30-year career has taken in a raft of business and advisory roles, from co-founding the world’s first online “bank to bank” trade finance company to launching E2E, an entrepreneurs networking platform.
E2E was founded by Khemka in 2011 largely due, she freely admits, to the mistakes she encountered in her first co-venture and the need to share with other entrepreneurs. Networking and people skills to the fore.
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It was also never intended to be the business it is today, with over 24,000 members and 80% based in the UK, it holds around 50 events annually.
“It’s been a massive privilege,” she says. “My currency is the people I get to know, currency isn’t the money I make. It’s actually the life experiences.”
“I’ve got some people I can phone, but I also wonder when people are not part of this kind of community, who do they phone? How do they solve it? That’s the problem we’re trying to solve for our members.”
The premise is for the community of entrepreneurs, investors and non-execs to make connections for founders, raising capital and securing talent. It is geared towards founders with a £1m plus turnover with its sweet spot in the “10m to £100m range”.
“If they’re looking to fundraise, they’re a decent founder and we believe in their credibility of the business and where they’re trying to take it, we will support them,” adds Khemka.
Born in India, Khemka graduated with an economics degree from University of Essex and worked for Coopers & Lybrand before writing a business plan for the world’s first trade finance platform while at Deutsche Bank (DBK.DE).
When its global head of trade finance left and started a company, in 1999, with three other co-founders, Khemka became the fourth using the business plan that she had concocted to trade letters of credit online.
It was only when she joined the private equity arm at Lloyds (LLOY.L) TSB five years later that she realised shortcomings with her first company and the first seeds were sown at E2E.
Her learnings were three-fold — raise money on time, don’t exit too early and have the right advisors around you.
