Platform Feature: Say Cheese

How do we define Say Cheese?

Say Cheese is India's first holistic women-happiness platform that offers personalized solutions to solve real challenges women face in their careers, relationships, and health. Through the platform, women can connect with experts and service providers from a variety of fields, seek and give support to each other and leverage proprietary action-oriented self-service online tools to solve their challenges and carve a path towards happiness. Our vision is to make the world a happier place, one woman at a time.

The problem being solved:

Women today are more successful and have access to far more opportunities than at any time in history. However, they continue to face a plethora of issues - Glass Ceiling, Body Shaming, Unsafe Environment, Biases, Compromise, Work-Life balance, Marriage Pressure, Patriarchal Mindset, Stereotypes, Sacrifice, Discrimination, Boy’s Club, Financial Dependence, Lack of Self-love, Loneliness, Health issues. The list is endless. The Happiness Ranking for India has slipped from 118 to 144 in 2020 (as published by UN SDSN) and the ILO data still shows that there is only 21% urban female workforce participation till 2018. 

Before starting the company, in-depth market research/interviews were conducted with over 500 plus women across various age groups and personas where all women acknowledged that the problems were real. These were then bucketed and three key themes emerged- Career, Relationships, and Health.

Moreover, the women also stated that the existing solution space is largely fragmented. They do not know which service provider to go to, who could they trust, who would give the solution that could solve their challenges.

And that’s where Say Cheese comes in.

How do we solve it, our business?

Say Cheese offers personalized and holistic solutions to solve real challenges women face.

Our services has its foundation in our Happiness Model which is based on Global Research and world renowned theories on Happiness along with real experiences of women interviewed and the Say Cheese team.

We believe that only success in a Career does not warrant happiness. Absolute happiness is anchored around balancing the three pillars of Career, Relationships, and Health. The journey starts inwards with Self Awareness. There are for cornerstones- Progress, Control, Experiences, and Gratitude.

Service Design: Our service design is based on the happiness model above and starts from Self Awareness. Right from the time the user enters the platform, the personalized journey begins. We measure her happiness levels through our proprietary assessment- Happiness Evaluation report (HER) which gives as output the scores around the various elements of our Happiness Model. The real journey begins after that. The user is recommended to take Coaching services which help her identify the root causes of the challenges she is facing and then various solutions through technology-enabled modules start surfacing from her to choose from.

Team:

Apart from Rajpreet Kaur who is the Founder, the Say Cheese team consists of Pradeep Wadhwa, the Fractional CMO, and Amandeep Singh, with over 20 years of rich corporate as Director, Nabeela Moosani the firm’s Sales and Customer Engagement Lead and Nainika Hira & Divina Tejwani as the team of psychologists. In total, there are about 21 people working in various capacities to make the Say Cheese vision come alive.

Whom do we cater to?

While the platform is open for all women, our initial target audience is career women and post-graduation students between the age group of 22 to 42 years of age from across India.

What do we offer to our consumers?

At Say Cheese, we believe that the journey of happiness begins with looking inwards. Before looking at personalized solutions, we encourage our members to look inwards and identify the root cause of their problems. This is done by taking the HER assessment, discovering your Ikigai, and identifying the challenges and issues that are hampering your growth. After that, we provide a host of solutions depending on the three key pillars in any woman’s life- Career, Relationships, and Health.

Career-related services - we offer a host of customized services to help you tackle the challenges you face in your professional life. Whether it is coaching and mentoring, up-skilling, Personal Branding guidance, or help in enhancing your digital persona, Say Cheese has something for everyone. Additionally, our Career Club Welocity, allows you to network with other professional women and exchange ideas. 

Relationship-related services- Build a circle of trusted women with whom you can confidently share your concerns without fear of being judged. Join our Frenz club to meet like-minded women and form lasting and deep relationships. We also offer professional counseling and coaching sessions to guide you on the best way to tackle a challenging relationship or conflict in your life.

Health-related services- Work towards a healthier you by availing customized services focused on improving your health and overall wellbeing. You can join Wibe, our exercise club.

What motivated us to start up?

After a successful corporate career of over 15 years, straddling both Corporate Treasuries (Tata Consultancy Services & Bharti Group) and the Banking Industry (HSBC, Standard Chartered), Rajpreet discovered her calling as an entrepreneur and founded Frenztastic (Brand –‘Say Cheese’) in 2020.

Rajpreet has always been very passionate about women's empowerment and happiness. The coming together of her rich corporate experience and this passion resulted in the launch of Say Cheese – India’s first holistic women-happiness platform that provides personalized solutions towards challenges faced by women in the triangle of influence - career, relationships, and health, within a trusted environment.

What's in a name?

It used to be a tradition while clicking pictures and celebrating those little moments to let the smile be more prominently visible and we would hear-“Say Cheese”. My 6 years daughter Bani had picked this up and used to say this regularly at home where she also loves cheese incidentally. So I thought what better name can it be to express happiness and celebrating those little moments of happiness in life.

How do we see Social Media?

Social Media is really quite powerful. It has disrupted the media industry and has given the power and means for every individual to be heard. This mode of expression enabled by social media should be used in a balanced way to spread the right messages and drive good behavior. It has helped several start-ups to reach an audience that would have otherwise been formidably expensive and time-taking.

Also Read: Platform Feature: Creative Adda

Currently we are....

Say Cheese was established in December 2020 and today we have over 2500 registered users on the platform. In order to provide our users best in class services, we have entered into several strategic partnerships.

We have also entered into a multi-year agreement with Kritical Edge Consulting (KE) who are our strategic marketing partner. In our endeavor to spread digital literacy and make women ready for the new age of technology, we have also collaborated with Digit.in

Our biggest challenge was..

Gone are the times when we women followed the crowd or are skeptical to start. I was very sure of my vision, however, like any other start-up by a first-generation entrepreneur, I did face numerous challenges, personal and professional - from legalese of setting up the company to drafting agreements, building the technology, finding strategic partners, making people believe in my vision, building a strong culture of committed people with shoestring budgets.

We want to dominate the world by..

In 2021, we plan to cement our position as the only holistic women-happiness platform in India that offers personalized and customized solutions to women across the key pillars of career, relationships, and health.

We’re making moolah by...

• We have various revenue streams:
• Transaction fee
• Subscription fees
• Freemium Model & Pay as you go

Industry as we foresee

Social Media is a great platform of expression and if used in the right manner, it can continue to form bridges across the world. However, the engagement on social media should be more meaningful and value-adding. With the current size of about 400 plus SM users, women being about 25%, we are expecting a number of women SM users to nearly double by 2025, and Say Cheese envisions impacting the lives of more than a million women.

Lastly, Are you hiring?

Yes, we are constantly hiring. We believe that employees will shape the future as much as the women users would.