Chanda Kochhar, CMD ICICI Bank

Moderated by Anita Ramachandran, MD at Cereberus & Chairperson at TiE Stree Shakti

Videos:

Session Highlights:

• Self Motivation: Zia started of initially with the challenges that women face in continuing their job after their marriage or after having their first kid. Self-Motivation is the single most important factor in facing these challenges. If you think you can, you will.

• Gender Bias: It is a tendency in women themselves for ‘Gender biases’. By this I mean that women themselves feel inferior to men at work place. Initially I felt the same. This is where self-motivation is important. Your inner confidence must be so strong, as to ward off any inferiority complex.

• Marriage: After marriage, make your ‘Mother-In-law’ your biggest partner in success. Work it out with her. I did. The biggest reason for fights at home is ‘Stress’. Try to make her life comfortable. Remember that inclusion of the inner world around yourself is the most important factor for organizational success. You have to be equally involved at home as well as work.
• Most important lesson from business: Always take your customer along while delivering a service. Keep him in the loop always.
• The decision of partnering in business: In 1994-95, it was an opportunistic decision. There was a proposal to team up with an international law firm. To me partnership is more of heart and less of head. Its more about open mindedness and acceptance of each other’s strengths and weaknesses.  In the advent of confusion always be frank.
• How do you want to see your firm in the next 10 years: I want it to be an ‘Institutionalized Law Firm’.  It should be process oriented and not people oriented. Eventually I want to scale up. For scalability, I think youth of the company should be given responsibility. Empower youngsters with the clients trust. Success will follow.

- Contributed by Abhishek Chande & Avishek Neogi

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.

Mentoring (guidance) lies at the core of TiE’s philosophy and culture! Senior entrepreneurs and enterprising professionals associate with TiE with a spirit of giving back. Mentoring is one channel for giving back. It is said that a consultant/advisor works on your business plan while a mentor works on the entrepreneur.

At TiE Stree Shakti, it is our endeavor to consistently add value to your entrepreneurial journey irrespective of your winning the award. For this we have opened this Business Guidance Hotline series to applicants of TiE Stree Shakti Awards 2011 only.

How Does This Work:

1. Indicate your interest to participate.
2. Download  this BGH template to present your mentoring need. (click here)
3. You will be allocated a Date-time slot corresponding to your mentor’s availability (on first-come basis). We will share the telephonic conference numbers.
4. Call in at the allotted Date/time to our conference numbers.
5. Present your thoughts for just about 5-10 min  describing your business and challenges followed by a feedback from the mentor for 15-20 min.
6. The TiE Mentor will give her/his inputs over a 15-20 min window. The mentor could CHALLENGE or ENCOURAGE your idea as a Devil’s Advocate and may provide hard-hitting inputs, to guide you in the appropriate direction.

1. Based on the inputs, you could move ahead and connect with the TiE Mentoring program in a chapter near you or reconnect with the various other TiE stree Shakti  programs to reshape your entrepreneurial aspiration.

How To Apply:

1. Let us know about your interest via email to sweta@tiemumbai.org
2. Download this template and fill in your details. (Click here to download)
3. Share the completed presentation to sweta@tiemumbai.org before 30^th June.

We encourage all of you to participate in this series and extract the most value from it.

Look forward to your participation.

Best,

Team at TiE Stree Shakti

Register NOW!

“Chat over Chai”, is a new interactive format by TiE Stree Shakti, for Entrepreneurs with iconic thought leaders and successful Entrepreneurs around key social and business issues … to encourage and inspire, them in taking their initial business efforts forward to a larger, more successful scale.

Over a series of sessions, we will invite diverse and inspiring business leaders to host talks and discussions with women entrepreneurs, offering valuable advice and sharing trade secrets. This event is exclusively for women only.

Topic: “My life experience”

Profile
Anu Aga, after retiring as Chairperson of Thermax in October 2004 continues as Director on the Company’s Board of Directors. She began her career in Thermax in 1985 and later was in charge of the Company’s human resources function from 1991 to 1996. She took over as the Chairperson of the Thermax Group in February 1996, after her husband Rohinton Aga passed away.

As Chairperson, Anu facilitated four major turnaround initiatives at Thermax. Reconstitution of the board, shedding of non-core activities, right-sizing of operations and increased focus on the customer. She is also instrumental in driving the high performance culture at Thermax, especially at the senior levels.

Anu has been very active in various national and local associations like Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) and has served as the Chairperson of CII’s Western Region. She has written extensively and given talks on the subjects of corporate governance, value-based management and on corporate social responsibility.

She completed her masters in Chemistry and worked as a head chemist for four months, before she gave it up to pursue her childhood dream of becoming a fashion designer. She has a very simple reason to choose entrepreneurship as a way of life.

“ It’s true that there are ups and downs and people think you are crazy because you want to venture into unknown territory with a 24×7 occupation and risks galore, but you are your own master. There is no one telling you what to do. You don’t have to beg anyone for leave if your daughter is sick. And frankly, I never really needed to make a choice between business and family. Its quality time and not quantity time that my kids need. If you have a drive, then just go for it. That will make you stick to the fight when you are hardest hit. It’s all about passion. I am very fond of making people feel good about themselves, right from childhood, so my work is my pleasure.

I have taken micro steps in the business and grown with every step. I don’t want to grow so big, so fast that I lose the sight of my basic goal of making people feel better about themselves. Today I have a client base of 4-5 regular women per month, and that’s more than I can deal with. As WSol grows, I may hire people to help me out and then expand my customer base. No one can take my place, the taste and choices are mine, and my expertise and experience comes into the picture there.”

Editor’s Note:
Sria Majumdar has interacted with nine women entrepreneurs from the Management Program for Women Entrepreneurs at IIM Bangalore and compiled an inspiring book titled ‘Inspiring Women to Start Innovative Enterprises’  that talks about their stories. This  story is an excerpt from the same book. The book is available at Pothi.com

Stories of enterprising people are often inspirational and encouraging for the readers. If you’d like to share your experience or a story of someone you know, please write to us:  info AT TiEStreeShakti DOT org

The day long program at India Habitat Centre on 8th Aug, 2009 will aim to focus on key issues facing women entrepreneurs and professionals through a series of discussions. There will also be a more intensive component covering 6 ‘must haves’ for running successful ventures relevant for all including women entrepreneurs, women corporate executives at all levels and from all functions who have been thinking of starting their own business and all other women who have the desire to start a venture and create a difference in the larger macro environment.

Dr. Shikha Sharma, completed medicine from Maulana Azad Medical College in 1992. Thereafter she worked in the Department of Cardiology as a Junior Resident in G.B. Pant Hospital. It was there that the desire to work in Preventive Medicine emerged. She worked with a weight loss clinic where she learned the practical aspects of weight loss programme. She writes for National Dailies like Hindustan Times, The Times of India Indian Express, India today, Femina and Cosmopolitan, to name a few.

Associated with the various health related programmes, she has frequently appeared as an expert on different TV Channels like STAR TV, CNBC, NDTV, ZEE TV, SAHARA TV and Home TV etc. She was honored with “The Women Achievers Award” in the year 1999 and 2004. She was awarded the “Talented Ladies Award” by the Bharat Nirman Society in the year 1999.

India Today has featured her among the top 50 young achievers of the country in the year 2005. She has been felicitated by FICCI with “Young achievers award” in the year 2006. Amongst many eminent doctors internationally from the field of health and nutrition, Dr Shikha Sharma was one of the speakers at an International Conference at the Fortis Hospital Chandigarh in the year 2006.

She was the guiding force behind her team to successfully undertake the responsibility of being the ‘official nutritionist’ to Femina Miss India contest 2006. At present Dr. Shikha is member of the Governing Body of Maietry College, New Delhi. She divides her time between her chains of clinic under the name of Dr. Shikha’s NUTRI-HEALTH SYSTEMS PVT.LTD. New Delhi.

Kalpana Jain

Kalpana is responsible for Financial Advisory in North India which covers mergers and acquisitions, formulation of entry strategy in diverse industry sectors, joint ventures, comprehensive due diligence, valuations, and private placement with strategic and financial investors and hiving off businesses.

She has national responsibility to Co-ordinate with private equity; she is a part of international Automotive M&A practice of Deloitte and heads the Indian Oil & Gas for Financial Advisory. She has worked closely with young companies and SMES.

The session got a variety of strokes on networking from the well blended panelist consisting of Ms Asmitha Ray Sarkar- MD- IQ group, Mr Laxman Jain- Ex President, KVO, Ms. Mala Vazirani- Director, Transasia Biomedicals.

L-R: Manak SIngh,Asmita Ray Sarkar,Mala Vazirani,Laxman Jain

The seminar was opened by Mr Laxman Jain- Ex President, KVO, who has been working towards promoting education, career counseling, networking and guidance to students and has worked time and again towards women empowerment. He has sent over 700 students abroad who in turn keep in touch with each other. Students stay with allotted families and become a part of the network to serve the network in future.

However he pointed out that in a business model, entrepreneurs are scared to spill the beans due to various inhibitions and insecurities. Often, the entrepreneurs believe that if they voice their business plans they could be copied.

The attendees

The session then continued with Mala Vazirani who went on to explain the importance of networking and human relations in business. This was perfectly explained with the example of her own company TransAsia, leaders in the diagnostic industry. The company was started by her husband Suresh with Rs 250 and today the company is a $450 million brand, with 900 employees across 30 countries.  Their vision to transform Asia gave them a purpose to go beyond the basics of business and have encouraged them to value human relations and form trust-based relations with their partners, clients, customers, employees, government officials, accountants and anyone associated with the industry.

Mala very brilliantly said to sustain your business you need not have profits but you definitely need to have a purpose.

The podium was then shared by Ashmitha Ray Sarkar who briefed the audience with an interesting presentation titled “Networking or Not working”.  She stated that it’s a process of developing and maintaining quality relationships that are mutually beneficial.

Networking is an on-going process and it could be personal and for practical purposes. Asmitha further touched upon topics like the reasons for networking, strategies of networking, secrets of good networking, efficient networking, and networking for shy people. She also pointed out a simple key for shy women entrepreneurs to network via intrapersonal mediums like the Internet and how efficient networking can save time.

She emphasized that every activity you do should be looked upon as an opportunity to network and should be a win-win situation for both parties involved.

Apart from this the workshop threw light upon the fact that how difficult it is for women to network. Women have to strike an excellent balance between their work and personal life. Fulfilling these dual responsibilities often keep them on their back foot when it comes to active networking. Women cannot socialize at late night dinner parties, they are usually shy to express their opinions/ideas with the fear of being mocked by their male-counterparts and sometimes restricted by general negative connotation attached to the word networking.

The key to overcome such constraints is efficient time management, thinking of innovative techniques and reinventing ways and means to balance professional and personal responsibilities. Some of the solutions suggested were network or socialize at home with your family being around or install the traditional social system of joint families. It is very essential for a women entrepreneur to reflect on her needs, understand her potential and always aim to move ahead without being affected by societal pressures.

Manak Singh, Executive Director, TiE Mumbai summarized the seminar by highlighting the thread of thoughts. Women have a natural flair for networking. It’s just a matter of getting in touch with the right person and at the right time and apply the same acumen in business. It is necessary for all entrepreneurs to make a conscious effort to overcome fears and inhibitions to master the art of networking. Networking is like a long-term investment and an effective network is built over a period of time.