She Hit the Ceiling—So She Built Her Own Empire: Sheelam Chadha’s Bold Move to Reshape Europe’s Real Estate | Ep. 207
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Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Founder Story. Today, we have Shilam, the founder of Dry Capital. And Shilam, I'm very excited to talk to you because I am very curious about the state of real estate investing in Europe because we've had so many guests on about the US. And I've been very interested to learn more about what's happening in Europe, the state of things. And I'm excited that what you are working on. So let's go back to you

you just created this company on International Women's Day 2025, which seems like a great day to launch something like this. But before this, you had over two decades experience in real estate and investing. So what made you want to start Dry Capital and why now? Yeah, no, thanks for the question. I think it's interesting. You

And when I speak to a lot of women who start their own companies, a lot of them have probably come through situations that after accumulating a lot of experience, they encountered sort of frustrating situations where they got a little bit tired of kind of what they call the glass ceiling. And I decided to launch my own company. I mean, I have a lot of experience in commercial real estate and institutional transactions in Europe.

Although I'm based here in Brussels, I speak to a wide range of international investors and I've always held kind of leadership positions in listed companies. And I just got to a situation where my experience and what I wanted to do was not always in line with the situation around me at the company.

And rather than doing what sometimes we all do, which is looking for a new job or situation, I decided to create something that I totally believe in, which is recapitalization into commercial real estate, because I don't think I need to explain the economy is a little bit volatile right now.

And, um, when you really believe in your idea and you have true conviction and you have experience, uh, especially as a woman, you kind of tend to be a little bit fearful. And so I just decided to go through with it and just start my own thing. And it's purely coincidental that I announced it on, on international women's day, but it was probably, uh, something subconscious that happened. Um, and I think that it would be fantastic if, if more women, you know,

take the courage to just go for what they believe in. And so that's why I started it. Yeah, that's amazing. And I've experienced that as well, where, you know, the corporate environment or the job environment wasn't fit to what I wanted. So why not go off and start something on your own? It's like the saying, if we make everyone else rich, why not just apply those things to ourselves?

You mentioned about the volatility in the market. I know you've been through Brexit, pandemic, all these other ups and downs.

So what are you looking at right now and what are you seeing the people around you? I know you meet with a lot of investors and stuff. So what what are you what are you thinking about in terms of where your focus lies during this environment? Well, look, I mean, the real estate markets since 2015, when you had the quantitative easing coming into the economy,

have been, let's say, extremely hot. So there's been cheap debt for almost, you know, a good bulk of 10 years. And everybody was buying real estate. It offered interesting returns compared to other asset classes and the stock markets. And then all of a sudden we had COVID and that puts the brakes on the investment market for probably about a year.

And then markets started again and they got even hotter for probably less than a year. And all of a sudden, then the interest rates went up from one to five percent or something in like two years. And so you had a huge segment of the market, whether that's investors or

and developers who got locked out because, I mean, if you, you know, if you take five times your interest rates, your financial charges explode and it becomes impossible to either continue financing any investment or project. So that coupled with still the effect of COVID, which is, you know, the trend of homeworking and, you know, out of city offices, which is now investors don't want to touch anymore. Right.

That work through with all of this real estate that's sitting on balance sheets is going to take a huge amount of time to get worked out. And so what we're seeing now is for the first year to two years, you kind of just say, okay, I'll figure out a solution. I'll sell this building. I'll find another project to refinance.

But we're now in 2025. I'm almost mid-25. So we're talking about three, four years now where this crisis has hit. With the U.S. elections now, we've seen in the beginning of March, beginning of April, huge volatility in the stock markets. So there's still a lot of uncertainty. And I think that a lot of investors in Europe thought, OK, this year's survived to 25%.

And actually what's happened is that a lot of owners are still seeing that it's going to be complicated for the years to come. So what dry capital is doing is we're placing private capital into companies that are looking for alternative ways to finance because the traditional bank financing is no longer, well, I won't say no longer available, but it's, let's say, a lot more limited.

And honestly, I think there's a lot of people saying that it might not be towards the end of 2030 that 2020, sorry, that we're going to see normal, you know, M&A activity coming back. So that's a huge amount of time to work through your projects. And usually real estate, you know, you don't keep it on your books unless you're an investor and you're holding long term for more than three years. So.

Yeah, it's going to be a little bit of a complicated decade. And so our company is just here to help provide solutions to give owners breathing time for that, this complicated period. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. It seems very a complex situation when we don't always know what's going to happen and we don't have the crystal ball. Like you said, it could be many years from now. And so, yeah,

you know, we still need to move forward and figure things out with the limited information that we do know, but changes, it seems like almost every minute daily basis. Yeah. So,

I know there's other women out there that might watch this and say, I'm also in a male-dominated industry. I want to get ahead and I want to start my own company. What advice do you give to them? And then what challenges have you had to overcome? Yeah, I mean, look, it's every... I mean, everybody has their own personal situation and I don't like to always generically talk about women or men. But I think that

What I've experienced is that you tend to, as a woman, get a lot more criticism and have to prove yourself a lot more.

And it takes quite some thick skin to be able to go through that criticism because you often start questioning your capabilities and your capacities, which in turn makes you question whether you're capable at all or not. And I think that when we compare with, you know, maybe certain types of male situations, that's just part of the game.

And, and, and of course, you know, men and women are completely different. What I would say to women is that you need to go for it and, and, and take the risk and, and fight for what you believe in and have the courage. And if anyone doubts you, you know, that's just part of the game. But if you have belief in yourself, you should, you should do your, do your thing that you believe in because, because

Otherwise you're waiting and you're waiting and you're waiting. And I think, you know, like, uh, I have good people around me that really support me and that encourage me. And it's really important to have a very strong network. Yeah. We had a, um, we had a Harvard professor on, uh, previously and she talked about how professors who are men, uh, would submit an, you know, a substantially larger amount of papers to, uh, to Harvard, um,

Because, you know, once they got the 50% complete, they would submit where women had to wait till they were 80% complete other professors who are women. And I found that very interesting that they had to, they were seeking more perfection where men were okay with things being actually perfect. Yeah.

So hopefully that will change, though. But thank you. I mean, hey, there's we need more people like you to to inspire others when it comes to what dry capital is looking at in the next few years. I know you had mentioned earlier about volatility and things might take longer. But how do you see the next five years playing out?

Well, so, I mean, I'm based here in Brussels. This is where I live. This is where my kids live. But I am really, I have a vision of dry capital being a very strong pan-European player. So I'm in discussions and I have plans to grow the company with strategic partnerships in some of the main cities in Europe.

And I won't try Capital by 2030 to be a well-known operational platform for investment in the commercial real estate markets.

So that means that we are looking at projects that offer really good returns in the medium terms. That means between three and five years in all the European markets where you can get attractive returns. I've been working the market long enough and I have a really strong network. So, you know, what I would say, and this is also maybe leading to the point about women is that

Your networking and your personal and professional network is super, super important. And I would always encourage anyone to make sure that you keep that, firstly. And secondly, always do things that you really believe in.

Because I'm working a lot with people that I've known for almost 20 years. And it's funny how many of them I'm talking to again now that I've started my own thing. And so, yeah, no, I see the company being really a true pan-European player by 20. So looking back to yourself 20 years ago when you started, knowing now that networking is such a critical part of the industry that you're in, what would you tell somebody today

who's in their 20s right now, so they can understand how to network. Because

I totally understand like you almost any industry you're in, having that network can be the thing that makes you successful compared to someone that is not. And I think it's even more so when you're going out on your own and you're creating your own company. So was there something that you did in order to build this network or any strategies that you can think of that could help someone who's right now in their 20s knowing that they need to focus on building their network?

Yeah, well, look, when I started, I was 26 and I was working a role that was basically sending me around Europe.

And I was attending every single conference that I could, every single exhibition, meeting with all the investors. I was just a junior at that time. But I kept as close as possible to some of the major investors, tried to connect with them on a more personal level, let's say. And a lot of these people I still speak with to this day because the world is small. And the European commercial real estate market, as big as it is, the network is quite small. And you see a lot of people that you worked with that are at different companies and

and back and forth. And, you know, it's all about an ecosystem. And I've highlighted it several times is that your personal network and the trust that people have in you is the most important, valuable tool you can have. And when you break that trust or you, you know, you do things that are probably not in line with your ethos,

Um, you don't want that. So I would say when you're young today, go to as many events as you can try and speak to as many people as you can learn from as many mistakes as you can. Because I mean, if everything went well for me in the past 20 years, maybe I'd still be working at big corporation and doing that thing. So I'm very grateful for all the things that I've learned and even the complicated situations.

But I'd say get out of your comfort zone because when you stay within your comfort zone, you're never going to do anything more than what you're comfortable with. So I like that. I like the, the, what you said about trust. It's not just about who, you know, it's about who trusts you. I think that that is a critical point. So,

My last question is, you gained this 20 years of experience in the corporate environment. And I am a big proponent of working in a corporate job to gain a ton of experience and then going and doing your own thing versus just doing your own thing and never working for someone. So what's one or two things that...

um, that you look back and say, well, I learned these things because I worked in that corporate environment that I can now apply to my own company. Well, a lot of what I learned and why I'm doing this, it's, it's funny. I ended up in a lot of, um, situations at companies that had been going through, let's say work throughs. Um, because you know, when I started, when I was 28 years old, um,

The company had some financial problems and they were being delisted. And so I had to go on this exercise to sell every single project or company or land that we had owned. One of the best things I've ever done for my personal growth was picking up a new language. Whether you're traveling, leveling up your career, or just love learning, speaking another language opens up many doors. And Rosetta Stone makes it easier, more immersive, more fun.

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But I kept thinking I want to be able to buy again. I mean, it would be nice to be able to buy. And actually, I learned a lot more in the difficult times than I did in the good times, because I always say, you know, buying in real estate, you know, you could be a sheep and you put a sign on your neck and you say for sale and it'll get sold. I mean, it doesn't it's not so complicated.

But yeah, the complicated situations that I've been in were the ones I learned the most. And again, like I say, you know, a lot of people I did deals with when I was 30 years old, I'm doing deals with today. And they're the ones that have helped me the most because we had so much trust with each other. And so I'm really grateful for that. And so I'd say, you know, we all have our business hats on and we all have to do things with a little bit of

And so, yeah, no, I think the work through periods in the companies I worked through

within the past were the ones where I learned from them. Well, this has been great. I'm super excited for Dry Capital and all the things you have going on in the future. I was very curious about how everything is happening in Europe. So thank you for sharing about that. And I can't wait to have you back on in a year, two years, and then see what's happening with the markets. I mean, it is a wild ride to be in the real estate investing industry, I imagine right now.

But if people want to get in touch with you, they want to find out more information, how can they do so? Well, look, you can go to the website. You can see my contact details there. You can connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm available. I'm open to discussing with anyone. And thank you. Well, thank you for joining us today on Founder Story. Thank you very much, Daniel.

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