As part of Her World’s Women Of The Year celebration, the Her World Hello Possibilities award is presented in collaboration with Singtel and recognises inspirational female game changers who have made it their business to improve the lives of women and society at large through their company’s impact, creativity and clever use of technology.

For Kritika Seth, her app Idle developed out of a very particular need – specifically, one faced by students at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). “I’m not sure if you’ve been out there before but it is FAR,” she says with a laugh. “It’s completely, completely detached from the entirety of Singapore. So for us, whenever we wanted to say, get a haircut for an interview or get something done for a party, you’d need to spend a lot of time travelling, then hoping to find a place. So the main idea that came from that issue is: hey, why don’t we bring more services into campus?”

Idle – named after the idea that everyone should have time to take the time to be idle – was originally conceived as a platform through which people could order or invite spa services into their homes. However, when the founders approached the university’s incubator, they were advised to first find out whether salons and spas would be interested in sending staff out to provide such services.

This led Kritika and her co-founder, Alisha Wadkar, to visit over 200 salons, going door-to-door to learn more about their businesses. “But after speaking to even just 10 or 15 of them, we realised that this wasn’t going to work because their main issue is internal operations.”

This was where Idle truly began. What started as an at-home beauty marketplace evolved into an AI-powered operating system designed to address the fragmented and often manual processes behind salons, beauty and wellness businesses.

“The majority of these [businesses] can’t handle their internal operations properly or in a streamlined way,” says Kritika. “Very much of it is completely manual. If you think about other service industries, like F&B, a lot of them have adopted technology quite well. They have proper POS systems, use accounting software – many of them have digitised. But the salon, beauty and wellness industry is still very, very manual.”

Idle uses AI agents to manage bookings, inventory and administrative workflows, helping traditionally low-tech SMEs reduce repetitive back-office work and operate more efficiently.
“As someone who’s going to a salon, I’m just concerned about the booking that I have,” says Kritika, “But for them, they have to look at: Is this staff available? How much commission are they getting? Is their commission based on certain services? Are they getting commission based on what they’re selling or upselling? Are there rooms available? So there’s a lot of bits and pieces that can get quite confusing, which then only add to waiting time, and their customers wait longer, and they feel like their customer service is not that good.”

Kritika initially planned for Idle to tackle only one aspect of a salon’s operations, but she and her co-founder soon realised that businesses would need a complete suite of tools to properly integrate the technology into their workflows.

“So what we made is a complete end-to-end system, where everything is connected. You don’t need two to three softwares, which is easier, especially for people who aren’t tech savvy in the first place.”

When it came to testing the software, Idle had no shortage of willing participants, thanks to Kritika and Alisha’s extensive on-the-ground research.

“We literally went door-to-door, asking them ‘Hey do you want to try our software? We’ll give it to you for free. We’ll sit in your store. We’ll do anything for you.’ And that’s how we started. I think because we were students they kind of pitied us,” Kritika recalls laughing.

“Over time, we got a lot of interest with these stores trying to adopt an AI solution – because no one was making one for their industry.”

Today, Idle has been implemented across more than 700 stores and counting.

As a female entrepreneur working in tech and the spa and wellness industry, Kritika operates across two traditionally male-dominated sectors. “Surprisingly, the spa and the spa software industry is very male-dominated and male-run,” she says.

Being both young and female has come with its fair share of challenges, but over time, Kritika has become less intimidated by these environments. “Youth can be an advantage, it gets people talking to you,” she says.

When it comes to women working in AI, Kritika is thoughtful about how their perspectives might differ from those of their male counterparts. “From my experience, I think they kind of look at it from a more human perspective,” she says. “For example, the staff that are working in salons, they don’t want to be judged on the metric of an AI system telling them they aren’t contributing. A lot of staff will make allowances for customers who are late or who get a discount. Ultimately, this helps the business, but AI doesn’t really factor that in if it’s just looking at revenue or volume of customers.”

She explains that having a boss or manager approve decisions allows for a more balanced approach, taking into account factors that an AI system might overlook.

“In the end that customer is probably going to come back because of that specific staff, so it’s good relationship building and this industry is built completely on human relationships.”

Looking ahead, Idle is working towards creating a fully autonomous store, something Kritika is particularly excited about. “Right now there are still a lot of touch points, where staff have to log in manually. We want to make it as hands-free as possible.”

One of the company’s biggest breakthroughs so far has been its WhatsApp agent, which can handle bookings and customer enquiries. “It saves on someone having to literally stand there and reply to messages, and it ensures that if someone sends a message outside working hours, they will still get a reply.”

Ultimately, helping businesses eliminate the administrative stressors that take time away from their core services is something Kritika is particularly proud of. “They shouldn’t be spending all their time on these things that get in the way of the beautiful services they are providing. This way, they can fully focus on that.”

PHOTOGRAPHY Sayher Heffernan
ART DIRECTION & STYLING Cheryl Chan
HAIR Grego Oh using Revlon Professional SG
MAKEUP Lasalle Lee using Givenchy Beauty
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