Growing Up in a Business Family. By Nysa Gaba | by Nysa Gaba

By Nysa Gaba

A personal reflection on legacy, learning, and building something of my own.

Some kids grew up watching cartoons. I grew up watching my father make calls that changed the course of a day – sometimes calm, sometimes loud enough for the whole factory to hear. Every Sunday, I’d visit his factory just to sit on his big chair, pretending I was the owner. The air smelled of freshly packed fabric and paper tags. The godown felt endless, and I remember wandering around, half curious, half in awe of how it all worked.

My grandfather had this old money-counting machine that made the most satisfying sound. He’d hand me bundles of notes and ask me to count them, like a little assistant who mattered. I helped my dad punch tags into sample pieces and stamp the giant cartons before they went out for delivery. At that age, I thought it was all play. I didn’t understand the grind behind it – I only saw the magic.

Back then, I didn’t know how things were built – how you hire people, how you earn money, how a business breathes. Everything just existed, like a story that had already been written. I saw the finished product, not the process. I didn’t yet know that the process was the real story.

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Lessons You Don’t Know You’re Learning

My father influenced me the most. He never joined my grandfather’s business– he built his own company from the ground up. That alone spoke louder than any advice. Watching him taught me that comfort doesn’t create growth.

From both my dad and my grandfather, I learned one principle worth more than any degree: your network is your net worth. I’ve seen my father be kind to people who weren’t always kind to him, and I finally understood why. He believes goodwill is currency. In his world, reputation travels faster than money, and relationships outlast deals.

So that became my quiet rule too – build a name that walks into a room before you do.

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Freedom to Explore

The surprising part is that I was never pressured to continue the family business. My parents always let me wander – first into sports, then non-medical subjects, even the dream of becoming a pilot. Every path I took somehow led me back home – to business.

In Class 11, something clicked. I started seeing inefficiencies in the family’s existing system, gaps I could fill. It wasn’t rebellion; it was curiosity. It was me wanting to take what already existed and make it better, faster, more adaptive.

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Thinking Differently

The first time I realized my brain worked differently was during a summer school exercise. We were told to plan a monthly budget of ₹10,000. Most of my classmates listed food, clothes, and fun. I saw the ₹10,000 as an asset, not an allowance.

That was the day I realized I didn’t see money as something to spend – I saw it as something to use. It’s not income, it’s energy. You move it around and it moves you forward.

Since then, I’ve seen failure differently too. Growing up around factories teaches you that mistakes aren’t catastrophes – they’re just production errors. You adjust, you restart. I stopped fearing bad results or small losses. I started treating them as prototypes.

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The Things I Carried

When I started Salvia Luxe, I brought certain habits with me – things I’d learned without realizing it. How to talk to customers like people, not numbers. How to remember what someone liked last time. How to make sure the packaging says “we care” before the product even does.

At exhibitions, I faced challenges – wrong sizes, shipment delays, demanding customers. But I didn’t panic. I problem-solved in real time because that’s what I’d seen my father do my whole life. In business, panic is expensive. Calm is currency.

The second lesson I carried was that relationships are more valuable than margins. Sometimes I let go of a small profit to keep a customer happy – and that person always came back. Loyalty isn’t bought; it’s built.

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The Things I Left Behind

What I didn’t carry was the “we’ve always done it this way” mindset. My family’s business worked beautifully in the traditional space – wholesale manufacturing, bulk orders, loyal clients. But I wanted to experiment. I didn’t want “safe”; I wanted new.

So Salvia Luxe became a mix of global imports and local sensibilities. I focused on experimenting with fabrics, fits, and styles instead of repeating what worked once. Because customers change – and I wanted a brand that changed with them.

When I started, my family was surprised. My father didn’t expect me to start something independent; my grandfather was quietly proud. They supported me, not because it made financial sense, but because it made emotional sense.

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The Real World

What I love most about the business world is freedom – the thrill of being your own boss. I love using technology to modernize what my family built. They worked offline; I built both online and offline. I love the idea that one post, one product, one decision can change everything overnight.

What still overwhelms me is the financial pressure – knowing how much you’ve spent on stock, hoping you’ll sell enough to cover it. Competition, too. Sometimes I see other kids’ brands with established goodwill and it gets to me. But then I remember – every big brand was once someone’s first try.

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I think growing up in a business family didn’t make me privileged. It made me curious. It taught me that you can inherit values but not success. That experience is the only real inheritance worth having.

And maybe that’s why, even when I tried other paths, I kept coming back. Not because I had to – but because I wanted to understand what built the world I was born into.

Because for me,