PEOPLE | interview April 2022 www.womanthismonth.com 58 Starting a business can be a daunting experience considering all the risks involved. That being said, with a good concept in hand, taking a leap of faith can be highly rewarding. This rings true for the Bahraini startup, My Gold Souq, which recently won top honours at a highly prestigious GCC-wide competition. Farah Baig speaks to My Gold Souq co-founder, Amy Vaya, about her family history, and her journey to conceptualising the award-winning business. Being an ambitious woman and coming from a family that has a long-standing history in Bahrain’s gold industry, Amy Vaya always knew that she wanted to delve into entrepreneurship. Ten years ago, when her friends quit their jobs to start their businesses, Amy wished to do the same but hadn’t zeroed in on her winning concept just yet. “I think when it came to it, my frustration in life was not that I didn't have a business so that I wasn't an entrepreneur, my sole level frustration was that I am an extremely creative, talented and intelligent person and these gifts were not being fully utilised,” she says. An Entrepreneur at Heart Amy fulfilled her role at various full-time positions but still had a burning desire to start a business. “When I was working a job, I would think that one unit of time equals one unit of money, but when you’re an entrepreneur one unit of time can be worth 10, 15, 200 units of money. With a full-time job, your return doesn’t change,” she says. Hoping to be struck by a great idea, Amy went on to establish a couple of businesses that didn’t quite go as planned. “This is not really my first rodeo, but it's something that I always wanted, and that my brother Priyesh wanted too. So, when he moved back to Bahrain there was just this synergy,” she says. That synergy, combined with the Vaya family’s understanding of Bahrain’s gold industry, struck gold with the founding of My Gold Souq - the region’s first direct-to-consumer jewellery platform. “Our family has been in Bahrain for four generations and my family business since 1937 is jewellery. My greatgrandfather came to Bahrain and was one of the first jewellers in the country, but the interesting thing in this story is that my father retired around 15 years ago as he did not feel that the business was worth passing on to his children. He couldn't figure out a way to modernise it and make it worth anybody's time,” she explains. STRIKING GOLD
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