Speakers:
Moderator: Rashmi Bansal, author, Stay hungry stay foolish
Saundarya Rajesh, Founder-President, Avtar Career Creators
Priyanka Bapna, M/S Priyanka Bapna (Garment Manufacturer)
Robin Chaurasiya, Founder – Kranti, NGO:
G Sree Vidya, Founder, Ravindra Services Pvt. Ltd:

Session Highlights:

• Till date Rashmi has written 3 books on entrepreneurship. ‘Stay hungry stay foolish’ focused on entrepreneurs from IIM Ahmedabad ,‘Connect the dots’ was about entrepreneurs without an MBA degree while ‘I too had a dream’ dealt with Social Entrepreneurs. She was always intrigued by an idea of a sole book on ‘Women Entreprenuers’ on which she is working upon.  As the moderator of this session, Rashmi extracted the stories of these women entrepreneurs in a beautiful manner. Following are some snippets, watch the video to view detailed story.

Saundarya Rajesh:

• Avatar CC was founded on the premise that there is a huge pool of untapped talent among qualified women professionals who have left the traditional workforce because they could not find the balance they needed to manage career with life and family.
• According to a study by Avatar, over the past two decades, over 13 lakh women professionals have quit the Indian workplace simply because they did not find careers sustainable. It is this pool that it is working with.
• Women bring in exquisite skill sets to the workplace
• Move from Work – Life Balance to  Work – Life Integration

Priyanka Bapna:

• She has her own garment manufacturing enterprise.
• Priyanka, an air crash survivor, never believes in giving up. Initially she started from a small workshop in Saki Naka and now she supplies garments to all the big retailers in the country like Big Bazaar, Shoppers Stop etc.
• People always suggested to stay away from a manufacturing business as a women. She was recommended to open her boutique and work at her own comfort levels- there would be no deadlines, no worker issues and less of stress. But she chose to have her own manufacturing unit and yes she is running it successfully.

Robin Chaurasiya:

• “Kranti provides a healing home, comprehensive education and personalized opportunities to India’s socially disadvantaged young women in order to empower and equip them with the knowledge, skills, and confidence necessary to build fulfilling futures and become agents of positive change in the world.”, says Robin.
• She further shared that her main challenge had not  been money but execution of her plans for women. For setting up a healing home, KRANTI was rejected by 12 landlords in spite of having the money.
• Robin feels that more number of people need to be aware about the needs and sensitivities of the disadvantaged young women.

G Sree Vidya:

• “If you can’t become a Cop, become a security guard!” She started off with this entertaining sentence and shared her story.
• Security services is a very unconventional business to enter with respect to women entrepreneurs. Traditionally a male dominated business, G Sree Vidya changed the rules of the business.
• Being the owner, she had to take a few harsh decisions like sacking,scolding and disciplining untrained male labourers. Because of this she used to receive blank calls and threatening advances from them.
• She used to carry ‘Chilly powder’ with her while going for field visits. She even used to perform surprise checks on the security guards in the wee hours to ensure sincerity in employees which eventually resulted in customer satisfaction and retention.

Videos:

Speakers:

Moderated by: Purvi Sheth , Shilputsi Consultants
Anand Lunia, Seedfund | Investor’s perspective
Mohit Dubey, Carwale | Entrepreneur’s perspective
Jer Masani, Florista | Employee’s perspective

Session Highlights:

Anand Lunia:

• Questions posed by HR functions in entrepreneurial activities :-
  • Team
  • Motivation
  • Commitment
• Great verbal and visual appearance may not always be the right fit!

Mohit Dubey:

• In business, you are whom you HIRE!
• Ambiguity is sometimes preferred in an enterprise.
• In early years, commitment is more important than competence, but later on, it’s the right fit that matters.
• Carwale’s Hiring Mantra
  • Freedom
  • Fit
  • Fortune
  • Family
• Let more competent people take better decisions.

Jer Masani:

• Entrepreneurship style is purely individualistic, without any gender bias.

- Contributed by Tejal Naik, Abhishek Chande & Avishek Neogi

All Services Global Pvt. Ltd. have Indira Gandhi International Airport, Delhi; Chhatrapti Shivaji International Airport, Mumbai; Indian Railways; ONGC; Reliance Industries; etc. as some of its major clients.

Accumulating funds at a time when banks were very skeptical about lending funds was the biggest challenge Sonal faced.

Priyanka faced many problem in starting and running her business,  gathering the starting capital was the major challenge she faced.

For Pratibha, the initial growth was slow because of lack of funding and business acumen. Today, with more mature technology and organizational structure she is able to convert business opportunities more efficiently.

Vidhya faced opposition from her family, her parents, and the male-dominant society. Being in the labor-intensive industry, she received threats and blank calls from the dismissed work force. She also faced humiliation and gender bias from her competitors.
She was successful in convincing her clients that a lady entrepreneur in this business can match the male counterparts. Her daughters are proud of what she is doing. Mental strength and self confidence are the driving forces that keep her going. She is credited with being the first lady entrepreneur in the business of guarding services and developing a battalion of lady guards.

Avatar has collaborated with various corporates to create flexi-career paths especially for married women. The company develops processes for organizations to handle flexible jobs and to choose which jobs could be performed flexibly.

Her work required intense missionary convincing of all possible stakeholders – corporates, society and investors. Saundarya faced the hardship which most innovators faced , lack of funding. She has overcome all odds and has the vision and mission to ensure that the 1.2 million Indian women who have dropped off from the workplace during the past 10-15 years are brought back into reckoning and are able to contribute productively to their homes, careers and society.

Saloni sees challenges as an integral part of her journey. Linking the rural to BPOs was a unique challenge for her. She had to cut through the stereotype beliefs against a young girl starting a unique business in rural areas. Other challenges she faced included building trust among the rural people, setting up a state-of-art IT infrastructure in villages, and training them.

Komal started with very limited funds and found that establishing a reputation with Law firms abroad was a big challenge.  There was resistance from the family as she had just got married and the business demanded long working hours. Today,  Talwar & Talwar Consultants is among the very  few companies in India that are providing patent related services to leading law firms and companies in different parts of the world.

The organization has grown from a modest pre-school  “Step By Step”  in Jaipur to “Step by Step Group of Schools” imparting education to 4,200 students. The group has three Pre-Primary schools, one CBSE 10+2 school  and one IB school. Jayshree’s next dream is to open an institution of higher learning in collaboration with a reputed college/university from the US.

Jayshree has received various awards for her work in the field of education, namely the President’s Award for Enlightened Citizens of the Nation, Dr. S. Radhakrishnan Award for remarkable contribution in the field of Education, Culture and Art and many more.