I never regretted my decision to step out of the 9-5 loop and into the shoes of an entrepreneur. – Hansini Sovis (Entrepreneur, Founder - PromoBox)
HomeTree Coworking has housed, cultivated and influenced many creators in the 4+ years that we’ve been operating as a coworking space. In today’s blog post, we bring you a story of entrepreneurship, leadership and perseverance by a boss-woman, to persistently overcome the obstacles in Sri Lanka, and make a standing for herself in the digital marketing world. Here’s Hansini Sovis, Founder of PromoBox and this is her success story as a startup housed at HomeTree.
Having accumulated years of experience in social media and email marketing at a leading digital marketing agency in Sri Lanka, Hansini felt that she had reached a level of stagnation after a certain point. Dissatisfied with the regular 9-5 cubicle life and feeling unheard and underappreciated as a woman, she soon realized that the best boss to work for would be herself! So counting on her expertise in the digital marketing arena she stepped out into her entrepreneurial journey with a fighting spirit and that’s how PromoBox came to be.
It is that very fighting spirit and passion for what she did that was her fuel to persevere despite the many obstacles that followed, after the founding of PromoBox in 2019. From the tough job of building a name and handling potential clients that were looking to undercut prices, to dealing with the aftermath of the deadly easter attacks which altered the economic landscape of Sri Lanka, Hansini and PromoBox had seen it all.
But, like the saying goes ‘every dark cloud has a silver lining’, things were just about to take a positive shift for PromoBox. Following the Easter attacks, Hansini was compelled to relocate her operations from one of the high-end hotels (similar to the ones affected in the attacks). It was in this course that she found HomeTree Coworking and decided to reroot her operations here.
“One of the key swaying points towards HomeTree was the ambience and how the staff there were genuinely interested in hearing me out and helping me find a solution that matched how much I was willing to invest. Moving into HomeTree has opened up many avenues for me in terms of tying up with other companies that are also based at HomeTree. Best of all however, is meeting so many like minded people hustling day-in and day-out to reach individual targets”, says Hansini.
This is also where she met Dushmantha, who carried a similar vision and passion as Hansini did for PromoBox. The saying ‘two heads are better than one’ could not have been more apt as in this situation, as they both partnered up further expanding PromoBox.
Hansini thanks the HomeTree Community and Semal - Director and Cofounder of HomeTree for much of her successes.
“Thanks to the opportunities created by a friendly co-working area and guidance when required by Semal, the co-founder of HomeTree, I now have a large portfolio of clients who we have managed to retain even through the Covid-19 pandemic. From work collaborations to finding advice when needed, the HT team has been very supportive in ensuring solopreneurs like me have the support when we need it” says, Hansini.
It is very evident that PromoBox has been a creation of pure passion, dedication and a ‘never give up’ attitude. Hansini says that she always focussed on ‘finding a solution, rather than the problem’. And working amongst a community that enables such forward thinking, solution-based creatives has seemingly supported that positive outlook and attitude, resulting in the current successes of PromoBox, which we at HomeTree could not be more proud of!
Wishing PromoBox more successes in the years ahead…the best is yet to come!
Signing off for today, with the promise of another success story next time!