UN Women has announced the theme for International Women’s Day 2021, as, “Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world.” The increasing presence of women as entrepreneurs has led to the change in the demographic characteristics of the business and economic growth of the country. Women-owned businesses and enterprises are playing a prominent role in society inspiring others and generating more employment opportunities in the country. In the era of globalization, the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs are of various natures. But life is not so bleak. When there are challenges, there are opportunities as well. 

On the occasion of International Women’s Day, Medicircle, a healthcare media company conducted an exclusive webinar to bring forward interesting anecdotes of the challenges and opportunities of impactful changemakers. The panellists of the Exclusive webinar were – Dr. Maya Sharma, Rashi Khanna, Seema Singh Bhadoria, Chandni Jafri, Shalini Vij, Rashmi Deshpande, Shivkalaa S, Arpana Aeron, Padmaja Duvvuri, Sonam Srivastava, and Hasina Parvin.

Dr. Maya Sharma is Global Medical Director, Win Medicare / Modi Mundipharma / Signutra. She works with cross-functional teams to develop and support the implementation of strategies to help build a sustainable organization. She understands business and evolving organizational priorities from a medical perspective. She focuses on medico marketing, new product launches, and business development- right from incubation to in-market launch.

Maya cited an interesting anecdote quoting R.K. Lakshman, “when someone asked him that he makes cartoons of common man but why not for common women. R.K. Lakshman’s reply was, “because women are not common.” She mentioned that when one sets out to achieve life’s goals fears are bound to be there but her mantra of success is to not allow determination and grit kneel down in front of the fear for the unknown. “So, once I decide on doing something, it’s all about utilizing all strategies to achieve success, seek advice from experts irrespective of their gender, do an introspection of what’s in control and what’s not, and when to seek help. You will be able to shed off the weaker you and become a more refined better version of yourself this way,” said Maya. 

Chandni Jafri is the Founder and CEO of Triple Bottomline Advocate.  The key mandate across her professional tenure has been to kick start projects/divisions/start-up media enterprises with core skill areas as strategy, sales, research & brand building. Her goal is to ensure the creation of sustainable media value for all the involved stakeholders - consumers, producers, distributors & other specialist intermediaries.

Chandni mentioned that “there is no limit of available opportunities, the only thing that we must know is how to harness and plug-in into those opportunities. We have voices inside and voices outside us that can put us in self-doubt but we should know how to put down such thought processes and keep on moving towards one’s goals. Every woman should spend more time in self-reflection and work in a process-oriented manner which would result from awareness gained through self-reflection,” said Chandni. Talking about her business venture Chandni said, “It’s like impregnating a setup with my own DNA, leaving my footprints behind and creating something which is going to endure. It is very gratifying and fulfilling.” 

Rashi Khanna is the founder of Ra by Rashi Foundation. She is committed to reinvigorating the social & economic well-being of the people in need. Her foundation has developed strong community bonds reinventing the meaning of change. She believes in the strength of building a helpful community. She is a seasoned business professional with over 18 years of experience both in a corporate setup and as an entrepreneur. Rashi believes in bringing the change that adds many smiles to mankind. 

Rashi emphasized that doing business means being more responsible and being the provider. She said that an important lesson that she has learned over the years is that if one wants the organization to prosper then one will have to treat one’s employees as one’s own. Then only will it be possible to run the business successfully. “You should know how to sell your own brand because then you will be able to teach your employees to how to do so. Give a listening ear to your employees and groom people working for you in such a way that they are your pillars of support,” said Rashi.

Shivkalaa S is the Founder of ACT Talks and has been identified as the Top 100 Women Transforming India by Niti Aayog. She helps entrepreneurs and artisans build and sustain their businesses. She is the Mentor at Cherie Blair Foundation UK and a social entrepreneur, devoted to creating a market for handmade products made by local artisans. She is committed to fair trade and amalgamating the compassion of the non-profit world with the effectiveness and efficiency of the business. 

Shivkalaa mentioned, “As kids, we are made to believe in God and the universal power even when we are not able to see it. Similarly, irrespective of whether someone is seeing or not I believe in what I do. My strong belief in myself influences people to aspire to believe in me and my venture.” She further mentioned that it’s a common feeling that being an entrepreneur means that you are not answerable to anyone. I believe it is the best part of entrepreneurship because you might fool others but cannot fool yourself and lie to yourself, hence being answerable to oneself is a good thing. There may be ten reasons for not doing something but that one reason to keep moving with one’s belief is something that is so special and when that belief reaps result, it is so satisfying. I challenge myself every day of what better can I do today to enhance mine as well as others’ output,” said Shivkalaa.

Arpana Aeron is the Founder and CEO of Consortin. She is committed and focused on clients with quality and outcome-based services. Consortin is a global business and start-up ecosystem with service providers, experts, mergers and acquisitions, franchises, and investors; all under one platform so that they can exchange business, ideas, and thoughts and connect! Arpana has worked in various product-based companies, as well as services companies, and has good exposure to the complete lifecycle of the software products and services.

Arpana was of the opinion that the definition of success cannot be the same for everyone. She explained, “For a child, success would be taking the first step, for a person seeking a job; success would be cracking the interview, for a new entrepreneur success would be getting the first client. But our society defines success as someone who has accumulated great wealth. This is something that I differ from. Success cannot be tagged to the last 5 to 10 % of the entire journey of a person. Rather, success should be the definition of his / her entire journey. There are some people who do not take even the first step to carve a niche, but those who have at least taken the step are successful,” she said. Arpana believes that when a girl learns to read and write, it means her entire family would get educated in the long run. Similarly, if there are women entrepreneurs, they would lead to the socio-economic change of the entire society. “Women make very good entrepreneurs as being an entrepreneur requires dedication which is a quality which is inherent in women,” said Arpana. 

Padmaja Duvvuri is the CEO of Arete Technologies. She is a Solutions Visionary responsible for interpreting the needs of the businesses, communicating the business vision and strategy to the team, and ensure the implementation of planned activities. She launched her company in the year 2000. Over the period, she added a couple of MBA degrees, a bundle of Certifications, and loads of experience to her profile. Being an avid learner, she made it a point to complete a minimum of two courses every year, for the last 15 years. She has been lucky enough to get selected for the Goldman Sachs 10,000 women empowerment program by ISB due to her caliber.

Padmaja said her entrepreneurial journey has given her 360-degree development due to multi-discipline of work, multi-skill sets she garnered, meeting new people, learning from clients and staff which are all such interesting factors. She mentioned, “Life is never normal as an entrepreneur and normal is boring. So, entrepreneurship is an interesting journey. I am empowering people in becoming leaders. Entrepreneurship is all about self-disciple, it’s not about having flexible timings. Sometimes you have to put in 18 hours a day as well. Entrepreneurship is all about continuous learning and keeping pace with everything that is happening; starting from the economy of the country to the new skill sets that one needs to acquire. To be able to learn every day, to be able to nurture your team, and to live with a passion and purpose in life is gratifying” said Padmaja. 

Rashmi Deshpande is the founder of Crafting Capability which is an HR services firm that models CHRO-on-hire to support SME & start-ups’ and make seasoned HR professionals available to work with them early in time. She powers the businesses of her clients with customized & contemporary HR Practices and a Talent Strategy so that they make prudent choices as leaders and managers. With the strike of Covid-19, businesses are combatting the challenges of a scattered workforce. Crafting Capability works closely with business leaders to hire, grow, promote and retain people, recreate HR-Practices, build capabilities for managers to shine, and leaders to lead in newer & contextual scenarios.

Rashmi mentioned that she draws the energy to wade through her profession by being open to new learnings that she comes across during everyday interactions with her team members, clients, and other entrepreneurs. “There is stupendous growth by listening to people. This learning adds the extra jinx to my professional life. Empowering people, proving one’s mettle each time when the capabilities get challenged, grabbing the next opportunity, and learning new dimensions through providing customized solutions to each client whose requirements are completely different from others keeps me going. I love the fact entrepreneurship helps me in witnessing the amalgamation of layers of business and layers of human behavior together” said Rashmi.

Shalini Vij is the Founder and Director of Sculpting Mentors. Her intent and focus are to carve the latent potential of all human beings to the extent that they can utilize all their unique resources to achieve their Optimum Level of Potential. She has 25 years of experience in the Healthcare Industry, expertise in Customer Care Operations, Quality, and Training. She is also an NLP Practitioner, Mind Conditioning & Life Coach. She is devoted and committed to inspiring and transforming lives.

Shalini mentioned that life itself is a journey and a journey cannot be accomplished if one is static or not moving ahead. There should be continuous movement. “Every time creating a new version of yourself best describes the journey of an entrepreneur. My journey would continue to the last breath,” said Shalini. She added, “Mind is the controller which controls our thoughts and manages our emotions. We must focus on conscious breathing and consciously sit for meditation so that the mind gets calm and is able to take good strategic decisions. She emphasized understanding the difference between Mind-full and mindful. “Mindfulness would lead to carving solutions to the problems,” she said. She mentioned, “In the journey of entrepreneurship, having victory over struggles with resilience is something that is very satisfying. She stressed the significance of carving one’s own mind in such a way that it leads to healthy and positive thoughts. Thoughts get generated in our minds and our actions are nothing but the by-products of our thoughts. She shared a significant line of her poem in which she has written, “woh din dur nahi jab har shaksh kahega ki kaaash main ladki hoti,” meaning soon a time would come when everyone would aspire to be born as a female.

Hasina Parvin is CEO and Editor-in-Chief of World Growth Forums which believes in a two-pronged approach of sharing highly valuable opinions, thoughts, and achievements with the national & international community through print & online mediums as food for thought. World Growth Forum brings various respectful contributors in nation-building together through an Awards function, Keynote Speeches, Panel Discussions, and Ideas for Improvement. Hasina is committed to positive growth through her venture and is consistently working towards creating a new and better world. 

Hasina described entrepreneurship as being captain of your own ship. She mentioned that she takes such good care of her employees that they do not feel like employees and work as if it’s their own company with complete cohesiveness. She mentioned that her goal is to be able to do better in each initiative and there is not a fixed goal of reaching somewhere rather the goal is to be moving ahead and having new achievements always. She highlighted, “We still talk about women empowerment which means we still doubt whether women would be able to do or not? Women entrepreneurs are not taken seriously. A woman’s out-of-the-box ideas are made to believe inferior to run of the mill idea of a male. We are psychologically brought up to believe that boys have the extra managerial quality and girls are better in the home management skills. Balancing responsibilities is always considered to be the domain of women which requires time and effort and becomes challenging at times. Also traveling is something that is not very easy for women compared to men as they just cannot check-in anywhere,” said Hasina. She believes that since women are very good empathizers, they can create better work environments and shine over men in professional set-ups as empathy is a quality that does not come that naturally to men.”

Sonam Srivastava is the founder of Wright. She has been featured as Top 100 Women in Finance by AIWMI. Sonam is quantitative investment management & trading professional. She is deeply passionate about quantitative finance. Since Indian markets are adapting to quantitative investing that is growing rapidly globally, Sonam has leveraged her wide experience and skill set in the same to build an exciting business in the traditional market of India.

Sonam mentioned that she is working in a segment where she is almost the single lady entrepreneur and the rest are all males. Even about 80 percent of the clients are males. She said that there should not be so much disparity between the two genders when it comes to managing finances. She advised women to start taking interest in managing money, especially at least their own money. She said that just like her investment initiatives, she takes high risks in her entrepreneurial ventures and gets fulfilling rewards sooner or later. “The journey of entrepreneurship is full of ups and downs, panics and relief but this is the roller-coaster ride that is satisfying at the end of the day. Also, to be able to nurture one’s business is something that requires more dedication than working for someone else. The rewards of this dedication are exhilarating,” said Sonam.

Seema Singh Bhadoria is the CEO of Richfeel Health and Beauty. She has a demonstrated history of working in the hospital & health care industry. She is skilled in Marketing Management, Sales, Business Development, Training, and Marketing Strategy and is a strong business development professional. She is shining bright and garnering lots of praises from all who work with her and experience her impactful leadership qualities and dedication towards work.

Seema believed that her professional journey has provided her an opportunity to collect rich insights from all whom she has come across. Some achievers that she has come across in her career have added an indelible mark in her personality as a leader just as she has been able to influence others by her good work. The obstacles that come at work are not actually challenges but opportunities of becoming a stronger professional; believes Seema. To be able to quickly adapt to changes and recreating a stronger and better version of oneself is the mantra of Seema’s success.

The webinar ended on the note of great bonhomie and all panellists expressed their happiness to be a part of such a great discussion.

(Edited by Amrita Priya)

 

Contributed By:  Dr. Maya Sharma, Rashi Khanna, Seema Singh Bhadoria, Chandni Jafri, Shalini Vij, Rashmi Deshpande, Shivkalaa S, Arpana Aeron, Padmaja Duvvuri, Sonam Srivastava, and Hasina Parvin