Since ages we have been hearing that men are the alphas of the human race, but Women on the other hand have proved that race wrong million times. They showed everyone that not only they can cook but can also earn and can equally match the footsteps of men in the Business world. They have constantly broken the barriers and paved their ways to establish themselves. From being the front runners in the family to the timely execution of their business, women have flourished and uplifted the business ecosystem and communities.
Today, women are branching out themselves as independent consultants or thriving in startups to enjoy the freedom of their passion and earn their own money. Here are a few women entrepreneurs who have built an example and helped in changing the landscape of entrepreneurship by showing the brighter side of the year by their efforts.
- Falguni Nayar, Founder & CEO, Nykaa: Falguni is definitely at the top of everyone’s minds as she has been the talk of the town since Nykaa’s recent listing on the stock exchange. She is one of the 24 women globally whose business touched the IPO milestone. Nayar’s journey as an entrepreneur started in 2012, when she decided to quit her job at Kotak Mahindra Capital Company as a managing director and decided to make a name for herself in the online beauty business. Nine years later, not only was Nykaa’s INR 5,352 crore IP oversubscribed nearly 82.5 times, its shares debuted at INR 2,001.Nykaa is also India’s first unicorn startup headed by a woman, and 58-year-old Nayar is today the second richest businesswoman.
- Roma Priya, Founder, Burgeon Law: Burgeon Law has guided promoters on the legalities of managing the uncertainty and extension of the runway in order to tackle various issues rising up with the lock-down and its impact on India’s start-up ecosystem whereas many female startup founders are consulting Burgeon Law to understand legalities associated with the force majeure. The firm believes in supporting entrepreneurs throughout their journey and in encouraging entrepreneurship in India at its core. Under the guidance of Roma Priya, Founder of Burgeon Law, India’s leading boutique law firm has for the two consecutive years done the maximum number of venture capital transactions in the country as recognized by Venture Intelligence and has also been recognized as the Top Law Firm by Forbes India in Legal Powerlist 2020.
Sonya Hooja, Chief Operating Officer and Co-founder at Imarticus Learning:
Sonya plays a key role in developing and implementing business strategy, directing business development, and recruiting top talent. In her career of over 12 years, she has been involved in strategy development and project management roles across diverse industries such as financial services, education, tourism, public sector and pharmaceuticals. In 2012, she co-founded Imarticus Learning along with Nikhil Barshikar with an aim to make aspiring professionals in the financial services and analytics domain fully equipped with the necessary skills to excel in their careers. Realising that professional skill development and training was the ideal solution to address India’s workforce shortcomings, Sonya along with Nikhil started Imarticus Learning. And in the times of Covid, they have launched placement centric programs like Income Sharing Agreement model, Placement before Admission, etc supporting and helping job seekers.
Aarti Gill, co-founder of OZiva –
- While growing up Aarti noticed that a lot of problems faced by people could have been easily avoided, only if they just had a better lifestyle. With this thought and to bridge the need gap, she started OZiva with the core idea to be ‘making living healthy simple.’ OZiva was started with the goal of enabling 100million+ people to have a better and healthier life. Working towards the same goal, OZiva now has become a brand. It is India’s first certified clean label plant based brand. OZiva has crossed an annual revenue run rate of 100 cr INR within 5 years. They have also forayed into clean beauty and kids nutrition very recently.
Raksha Kothari, co-founder and head of sourcing at GO DESi
- GO DESi is a clean label packaged food brand offering a range of Desi Indian specialties. It was started as a D2C brand whose products are manufactured by micro-entrepreneurs, farmers’ cooperatives, and self-help groups. Raksha Kothari looks after procurement, vendor management and production. She also takes care of HR & alliances including recruitment, training & development of the workforce as well as tracking the impact on ground. Under her leadership, GO DESi has employed more than 200 women in their manufacturing setup in Bangalore.
Nidhi Jain, Founder & CEO, KareXpert –
- Amid the COVID-19 crisis, healthcare; starting from doctor consultation and diagnostics tests to getting medicines, shifted online almost overnight. This service was uncommon back in 2014-15 when Nidhi Jain, IIT Roorkee alumnus, began her entrepreneurial journey. Nidhi, Founder of KareXpert, who has always drawn inspiration from entrepreneurs, comes from a family of people working in the healthcare sector. She began her work by providing video doctor consultation solutions to patients. Prior to starting up, Nidhi held product management responsibilities with popular companies such as Transera and Mahindra Comviva. After realizing the lack of unified solutions in hospitals and their siloed working which leads to higher operational cost & sub-par care to patients, she pivoted to focus on building an integrated digital healthcare platform. In 2018, Nidhi launched KareXpert, which is aimed at digitizing hospitals by providing a SaaS-based digital healthcare platform. A unified platform that provides end-to-end automation of patient journey in a hospital and enables them to run their operations at 100% functionality. Today, she aims to digitally transform 100,000 hospitals by FY2026.
Zahara Kanchwalla, Co-Founder & CEO, Rite KnowledgeLabs
a knowledge first digital agency converged her passion for digital technology and communication by co-founding Rite KnowledgeLabs, which delivers Storytelling as a Service (SaaS) and has created original content and led thought leadership mandates for some of the biggest brands across sectors. After completing Plastics Engineering more than a decade ago and doing a Post diploma in Computer Applications, she never imagined that down the line she would emerge as a digital storyteller. The firm has created digital assets and social media outreach programs from the ground up by marrying strategic consulting with executional rigour. Be it social media advocacy, corporate websites, subject-specific microsites, investor and cause reporting-led digital assets and reports, they research & write, design & develop in an integrated manner.