Name: Jani Jermans
Business Name: SJ Mobilita'
Location: Bangalore, India
Establishment (Year): 2017
Category/Industry: Legal & Accounting and Finance, Insurance
Profession/ Specialty: HR and Legal Consultant
Company details:
About Ms. Jani Jermans: Ms. Jani Jermans has over 15+ years of experience in the International HR Services, Immigration and Travel field. She started her Immigration experience working at the British Deputy High Commission, Chennai and went on to lead the Global Immigration & Travel Department for various IT & FMCG Firms. Currently she is the founder of SJ Mobilita’. History: While leading the global immigration and travel in various industries, I saw there was no one single company who supported the corporate with their end-to-end requirements when they must depute employees overseas. For example, for one deployment overseas, the company must reach out to local law firms in the destination country for work permit processing, payroll companies to set up payroll, another person for audit and compliance etc. Some of the countries need local entity and labor quota to process work permit and corporate had to decline such projects as they were not aware that there are companies like ours who can support with the sponsorship where they don’t have local labor quota. Also, corporate must reach out to recruitment/staffing company to fulfil the local hires etc. So, it was a need of an hour to start a company which becomes a one stop solution for entire international requirements and that’s how SJ Mobilita’ was born in 2018.
Unique selling proposition/ competitive advantage:
Purpose, Vision & Goal: The purpose was to educate the corporates on the business compliance on their business travel and guide them to ensure they stay 100% compliant whether they are travelling on business trips or deputed on an international assignment on work permits. We have seen that the company getting penalized by Immigration departments like US etc for misuse of business visas as most of the companies process business visas like tourist visas and allow employees to do work (even if it’s for a shorter duration) and then they must pay a hefty fine of millions of dollars. So, it was important to bring awareness and educate the corporation not to take short cuts and stay 100% compliant. We are the only company providing end to end support for corporates for their international requirements which includes the following services on the International front: • Recruitment, • Staffing • Payroll • Immigration support for processing work permits (we can support for more than 150 countries) • Audit and compliance verification and validation • Sponsorship of work permit (if the client doesn’t have local entity in the destination country, this also depends on local country guidelines) • Consulate Interview Preparation • Guidance and support on consular documents requirements for various countries • Validation of Business Travel compliance • Support for Relocation • Support for setting up office in International locations • Legal support for any concerns in terms of local labor laws • Entire Travel Support for the company including business travel, Leadership offsites etc for both international and domestic locations, • Translation of documents in international languages • HR consulting on minimum wage policy • HR & Immigration policy guidelines • best practices, and any other service requirements for the corporate. On the Domestic side we support companies in their Recruitment, Staffing, payroll, compliance for expats employed in India, visa and travel support, FRRO Support, relocation support and any other support services.
Challenges faced during the journey:
There have been numerous occasions or struggles that were a learning experience for us over the years and we had to work our way through them. In one instance, we had a large client for whom we set up a full staffing implementation abscond after a month without paying anything for a month of effort for about 25 employees. It was a big setback for us as we had invested heavily in the setup and had to take the loss on ourselves. A big problem we face being a start-up is that we are competing with big and established brands in a lot of cases and must ensure that we are competitive without compromising on the quality of our offering. For example, we had to lose out on a project where we were cost-saving the client 20% of their expense, still they had to go ahead with another company just because of the brand even though their cost was way above ours. Another struggle we had initially was that when we started, we didn't have brand recognition and breaking into the market without that required a lot of effort from our side and collaboration with our clients. Once we had the first few clients’ onboard things became easier.
Advice for women entrepreneurs:
Dream and work hard to achieve that dream. Let no one stop you from achieving that, even if you fail, get up and try again. Never ever give up, no matter what. Once you have started focus on your product and give a quality offering, instead of focusing on growth immediately. Growth will come automatically with a quality offering. Too many companies focus on growth at the expense of a product. In addition, ensure that you never, ever compromise on your ethics and values when building up your company. This is the only thing which will guarantee your long-term success.