Zeenath Kuraisha was 19 when she started with a home-based administrative support model for professional in the FSI industry. Zeena is one of the pioneers in the Call Centre industry in Singapore. After acquiring skills in the call center industry in 1996, she set up her first professional consulting company to help organizations improve and implement CRM, Sales and Tele Marketing processes into their existing operations via Call Centre structures. She started Asia Pacific Sales and Marketing Academy (APAC SMA) in Singapore after close to 20 years of Industry experience in the areas of Customer Experience, Inside Sales and Customer Focused GTM practice with various global MNCs.
“I always loved the freedom, the ability to display and work interesting ideas my way which a normal role strapped job doesn’t allow,” says the founder Zeenath.
APAC SMA was established to provide customer experience transformations and help organizations win through value creation and relationship building. APAC SMA provides consulting to organizations to set up and, or improve their internal CRM, Virtual Sales, CxO Communications and Go-to-market efficiencies.
In addition to their value offerings, APAC SMA has created an NGO to develop a formal and practical industry based skills enablement to train and create more customer focused sales and marketing professionals and organizations. APAC SMA works on consolidating years of failures, case studies, best practices, various methodologies and includes researched future trends as part of their curriculum development. In par with the ability to provide same global and knowledge standards to INSEAD level executive education at a reasonable premium, they have close to 50 hand-picked industry associates in Asia and 80 across the globe from top-notch brands across all industries for a more practical impactful coaching sessions ‘with people in the field for the people in the field’.
Zeenath is in the process of getting and launching accredited Diploma and formal Certifications from global industry and educational institutions.
When she started up, Zeenath was a little skeptical about the loss of financial freedom. “We made a plan with milestones with revenue objectives and qualitative goals as part of our decision-making process,” she says.
Adding to it, she says that it’s been a tough journey. Zeenath used to go on frequent holidays which is something she has to earn hard for now. She believes every household should encourage and support women. Zeenath has refrained from external funding to help avoid pressure and maintain centralized decision making. Bootstrapped, this also restricts the startup when they want to scale up and invest in critical areas.
A mother to 4, Zeenath advises future entrepreneurs to work towards their business. “Idea alone won’t work. It requires a good team, Product development, PR, Marketing, Business Development, Sales, Finance, Economics, Macro and Micro Environmental knowledge, Industry, Consumer knowledge, Corporate governance discipline and many more components to make it successful…
She ends by saying, ‘We should believe in our values and stand by the ‘Why’ in tough times’.