This Women’s Entrepreneurship Day let’s take a look at strong growing leaders of tomorrow
When we talk about unicorns in business, we usually see praises for men in the business and the women entrepreneurs are not celebrated as much as they should be. This women’s entrepreneurship day, let us take a look at a few female leaders who have broken glass ceiling in the corporate world through their unique start-up and business models:
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 100 million+ 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. OZiva has successfully become one of India’s leading clean plant based holistic wellness brands under Aarti’s leadership.
Sonya Hooja, co-founder of Imarticus Learning – Sonya Hooja, Chief Operating Officer and Co-founder at Imarticus Learning, 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.
Raksha Kothari, co-founder and head of sourcing at Go Desi – Go Desi is a new-age 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.
Neha Bagaria, Founder of JobsForHer – JobsForHer is a platform that enables women to accelerate their careers by connecting them to jobs, community, mentoring, reskilling, inspiration and networking opportunities. Incepted in 2015, it connects over 2.2 million job aspirants registered on the platform to 7500+ companies across the country. Aside from matching the candidates to relevant job opportunities, the platform also offers mentorship for women looking to start/restart their careers. The brand also has over 500+ reskilling partners to assist women in reskilling/upskilling themselves before they join/rejoin the workforce.
Nidhi Jain, 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.
Neeti Sharma, President & Co-Founder, TeamLease Edtech – A professional journey of over 30 years with a blend of building & managing businesses, strategic thinking, leadership and making a difference in lives of many both in the Indian & International markets, Neeti has acquired domain expertise, is extremely passionate and operates at the intersection of Employment, Employability & Education. Neeti has had the opportunity to interact with various stakeholders and each interaction has been a learning experience. A lifelong learner, Neeti would like to highlight that while there have been many challenges that she has had to face during her professional journey, she has always come out of these difficult situations learning many valuable lessons. As a women leader and entrepreneur, Neeti has always exhibited a can-do attitude and pushed forward. Navigating certain situations can be tricky, however, as an entrepreneur and leader one has to remain focussed on the larger goal and be prepared to take some risks. Neeti has forged a path of success through sheer determination and hard work. Through her journey, she has also strived to maintain a work-life balance and therefore ensure that personal and professional priorities are met in an equal manner.
Roma Priya, Founder, Burgeon Law – An entrepreneurial lawyer, mentor and startup enthusiast, Roma Priya is the Founder of Burgeon Law, a new-age one-stop legal firm that supports growth, change and innovation in India’s evolving startup ecosystem. Being the brains behind the company, she advises and mentors early-stage & high-growth startups, incubators, accelerators, angel investors, family offices, and venture capital/private equity funds. Roma has been a part of Kotak Mahindra Bank and Sandhill Counsel prior to setting up Burgeon Law. It was during this period that Roma identified the legal issues and challenges faced by new-age companies at every step. She wanted to unlock synergies between conventional legal practices and the dynamic requirements of the rapidly changing business environment in India, with a view to eventually help early-stage entrepreneurs build their businesses. This was when Roma came up with the idea of Burgeon Law, a startup-focussed firm that – with innovation and collaboration as its core pillars – provides entrepreneurs with price-sensitive and quality legal advisory and support.
Jasmine Bharucha, Katharos foods- Jasmine Bharucha , Founder & CEO, of Katharos foods, she started her journey to lead a healthy plant based lifestyle and observed the lack of good quality and affordable vegan cheese in the market. This motivated her to bring plant-based dairy alternatives for people who want a high-nutrition and affordable plant based lifestyle with Katharos. After spending years in the corporate world, she started her entrepreneurial journey with Katharos in 2019. Awarded for her efforts, Jasmine was selected among the top 5 Humane Entrepreneurs in India by HSI in 2020. Under her leadership, Katharos was named the ‘Best Vegan Cheese in India’ by PETA in 2021.
Dr. Vibha Tripathi, Boon- Dr. Tripathi is the founder promoter of Swajal Water, a technology driven company with a focus on social and environmental impact with respect to drinking water. She has been the key driver behind Swajal’sIoT enabled Water ATMs and WaterCubes, commercial premium drinking water machines meant for 100+ people. Each machine is driven by an IoT mechanism designed and engineered in Swajal’s in-house R&D facility, which allows the team to send and receive key information. The company collects this data through the remotest parts of the country and has built a unique water map. This remote-control mechanism also allows management to repair and update the machines effortlessly. The latest designs for b2b allow user engagement, a QR Code phone app to check water quality in real time and a dashboard for admin to monitor their usage. Many of the designs are solar ready. In her free time, Vibha loves rustling up interesting meals, preparing for marathons, and traveling to new destinations.
Astha Almast, Chief Business Officer, The New Shop – Born in a family of industrialists, Aastha is a true-born entrepreneur. She was a student of Economics from the prestigious Hindu College of Delhi University after which she studied PGDM in Fashion Marketing from Pearl Academy of Fashion to pursue her passion in retail and branding. She is also an alumni of Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. She is a serial entrepreneur, who is always looking for solutions to simplify businesses – making them more productive and efficient. Prior to launching The New Shop, Aastha spearheaded a series of startups across diverse industries such as mobile gaming, online reputation management and consumer retail. While studying for a Bachelors, she joined her father’s stock broking firm making her one of the youngest certified stock-brokers from National Stock Exchange. She has lived an adventurous life and has amassed 12 years of diversified experience in entertainment, finance, branding, and retail. Her interests and pursuits are also reflected in her well-rounded personality. Aastha has the capability of turning everything she touches into a profitable venture. Much like the Virgin Group of UK, Aastha enters every domain afresh but quickly disrupts & evolves the landscape of the chosen industry.
