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Female entrepreneurs have long been shaping the economy of India. Building a multimillion-dollar company is not an easy task. These 7 businesswomen in India are revamping the Start-up scenario in the city of Gurgaon.
Launching a business venture is never easy, especially when you are a woman. Most of the rules in business world are made by men, and they are always against stacked female entrepreneur.
These 7 female entrepreneurs from Gurgaon show us that with a market ready to accept anything unique — a creative and of good quality business can be established.
Gurgaon became the ideal choice for setting up their enterprise for these businesswomen in India, where so many people flock to find their jobs. The city has a professional atmosphere and a crowd with a liberal mindset that allows an entrepreneur to grow and scale up the business.
In fact, Gurgaon has a United Nations (UN) technology innovation laboratory which will work on promoting women entrepreneurship in the region. The city is home to some of the successful female entrepreneurs in India.
Image Source: Twitter @UpasanaTaku
The chairperson and co-founder Mobikwik, Upasana Taku, had a strong desire to work or create a solution that impacted millions in India.
Following her desire, the Stanford University alumnus gave up her flourishing career with the payment industry giants PayPal and HSBC, returning to India in 2008. Meanwhile, as she was still exploring the buzzing sectors, meeting new people and exploring new ideas, she started working for a rural microfinance NGO called Drishtee.
Through her friends, she met Bipin Preet Singh, her husband and Co-founder, who was also eager to start up in the payments’ industry. In 2009, they founded MobiKwik and launched it as a mobile recharge platform, enabling users to recharge their phones from any location.
From then, the business has expanded to include bill payments, e-commerce shopping, food delivery, payments at petrol pumps, large retail chains, pharmacies, Kirana stores, etc. Their key platform also enables peer-to-peer payments via Unified Payments Interface (UPI), MobiKwik Wallet as well as MobiKwik Wallet to bank payments.
However, Upasana did face a few challenges in the beginning, as she was seen as limited by her identity as a female entrepreneur. While managing finance for Mobikwik, one CA and investor firm had asked her if they could talk to a male in the team. Undeterred by this gender bias, Upasana has created one of the first mobile wallets of India.
Under Upasana’s able capabilities, the company has amassed over 108 million Registered Users and more than 3.45 million e-commerce, physical retail, and biller partners
Image Source: India Today, April 18, 2016
Suchi Mukherjee is the woman behind the e-commerce lifestyle and accessories portal LimeRoad, designed using a fashion magazine layout.
Before starting her venture, LimeRoad, she had worked as an investment banker with Lehman Brothers. She had also worked with companies like eBay, Skype, and GumTree.
During her maternity break, while she was reading a magazine, Suchi came across a piece of jewellery from a local artisan in Mumbai. She couldn’t buy it, but it gave her the idea that technology could be used to discover new products. Seeing untapped potential in the lifestyle industry, she decided to take the plunge.
Her aim was to create a platform where customers could discover and purchase affordable but high quality product created by vendors. Having played a pivotal role in building GumTree as a successful brand, she felt she needs to start something of her own.
In 2012, she returned to India and launched LimeRoad along with its co-founders Prashant Malik and Ankush Mehra. True to her vision, her unicorn start up grew rapidly.
What sets apart LimeRoad is its scrapbook tool that allows people to select a range of products, create a distinct look, and share it with their friends. Thus, anyone can become a stylist and sell their curated looks.
Image Source: Instagram @ghazalalagh
Ghazal Alagh, Co-founder, MamaEarth is one of the most successful female entrepreneurs in Gurgaon.
Her stay in the US had made her aware of the presence of harmful chemicals and toxins in cosmetics, especially baby products. During her pregnancy, she along with her husband started exploring for safer options in baby products and realized there wasn’t much available in the Indian market.
As a result, they had to order products from the US, which turned out to be quite expensive and inconvenient. This made her realize that there might other parents struggling with the same issues. Thus, she decided to do something about it.
Her biggest challenge was to identify effective natural ingredients which could be used as replacements for conventional ingredients in baby products. Like many businesswomen in India, Ghazal too faced gender bias, but she never let it stop her.
Thus, MamaEarth was born, which is now Asia’s 1st MADESAFE Certified Toxin-free brand. Her brand is now offering over 20 products for babies and mothers and has store presence in Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru and plans to expand to 10 cities.
Image Source: Instagram @swatidb
Swati is the co-founder of CashKaro in 2013. It is India’s largest Cashback & Coupons site.
CashKaro was built with strategic tie-ups with retailers like Amazon India, Myntra and Jabong. Together with her husband, she raised Rs.5 crores from London-based Angel Investors the same year.
Swati is an alumnus of the London School of Economics and has worked at Goldman Sachs in London for 5 years. She started UK Cashback business Pouring Pounds along with her husband and business partner, Rohan Bhargava.
Her journey as a female entrepreneur was not easy, winning over the conservative mindset of people both in her own country and aboard made are more determined to continue!
She has also represented India at the coveted Blackbox Connect – Female Founders Edition which has been powered by Google in Silicon Valley, California and is an active keynote speaker in India and internationally.
Her business venture is backed by Mr. Ratan Tata and some of India’s leading VC firms, Kalaari Capital and Korea Investment Partners. With over 18 million registered users, CashKaro is now a mass favourite destination for savings across 1500+ e-commerce sites like Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, AJIO etc.
Image Source: FabAlley Blog, March 8, 2017
Carving their niche and creating their own space in the fashion industry is the duo Tanvi Malik and Shivani Poddar, founders of faballey.com.
Before starting their own venture, these two women entrepreneurs from Gurgaon worked in the corporate sector, Tanvi being a brand manager at Titan Industries Ltd. and Shivani an Investment Banker at Avendus Capital.
During their 9-to-6 jobs, they realized the lack of global fashion trends at affordable prices in the Indian Market. Conducting a market survey, they realized that there was no trend-centric fashion/brand shop that could match the global brands at affordable rates. So, FabAlley was formed in early 2013.
Initially, it started as an accessory only brand, but added apparel to its collection later. And in the beginning of 2022 the company has closed the financial year at 40% growth.
The company specializes in providing affordable cutting edge fashion. All their products are designed in-house by young designers aiming at multitasking, millennial women customers in mind. They also drop more than 100 products a week, making them a rapid fashion brand.
Image Source: Instagram @priyasblog
Priya Prakash is a healthcare female entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of HealthSetGo.
HealthSetGo is India’s largest health organization for schools and colleges that supports the UN’s sustainable development goals of health and education. Their programs have impacted over 250,000 students across 77+ cities in India.
Priya, is a member of The World Economic Forum as Global Shaper. Her goal is taking up many social projects aimed at rural India. She is a TEDx Speaker, Crossfit L1 trainer, and an avid health blogger.
She established the company with a vision to empower parents, doctors, schools, and governments. The company creates a ‘digital health report card’ based on data collection which is analysed to provide information about a child’s health. This helps in pinpointing health related issues a child might have.
Doctors record the information on HealthSetGo’s proprietary app while conducting examination, which can be instantly shared, making a single digital place holding complete available medical information. In 2019 Priya was awarded the Global Citizen Cisco Youth Leadership Award.
These female entrepreneurs may have started their business in the city of Gurgaon, but they have created highly scalable national businesses. Each of them has encouraged a whole ecosystem around their work— be it designers, suppliers or employees.
Image Source: Instagram, Twitter, FabAlley Blog, IndiaToday, edited on Canva Pro
An engineer by profession but a writer at heart, I try to seek happiness through my writing. I am an avid reader, a blogger, and I like to write about books and my reflections on read more...
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