Meet the Mompreneurs
In the West, there are websites (the
mompreneur.com), sections in pub lishing portals (entrepreneur.com
topicmompreneurs), a magazine (The MOMpreneur in Canada) and books on the
phenomenon (Ask the Mompreneur by Jennie Wong); and various media at various
points of time have listed the likes of Arianna Huffington (co-founder of
Huffington Post) and HTC founder Cher Wang amongst the world's most powerful
mompreneurs.
If you haven't figured it out yet,
mompreneurs are mothers who choose to start up a business while bringing up
children. And often these moms are those who gave up corporate jobs -many of
them in leadership positions -to first turn mother and then marry maternity
with entrepreneurship.
While in India the concept is not as
evolved as the West, it is gaining ground, along with the phenomenon of
entrepreneurship itself. Last year, for instance, a community called
Mompreneurs India was launched to provide support to mothers running businesses
of their own.
“We started as a platform to offer
services to mompreneurs who start with small resources to help them find access
to financial planners, trade part ners and the like... the support network and
the right ecosystem is the biggest challenge that these women face,“ says
Chetana Misra, founder & CEO of Mompreneurs India, who gave up a 13-year IT
career to take care of her son.
Surprisingly, Misra finds that the
biggest challenge for mompreneurs is not their family responsibilities.
“Usually these women have held corporate jobs and know how to balance family
and work. What they need in a bigger way is the collaborative network of others
like them,“ she adds.
Being a mompreneur comes with its
unique set of challenges. Ask Suruchi Wagh, founder and chief products officer
of Jombay, a talent measurement and analytics platform, and mother of an
18-month-old son, “The biggest challenge is to constantly keep reminding myself
that when at work I'm not letting the mother influence the entrepreneur, and
vice versa when at home.“
Being a mother who ensures the
smooth running of a family may be an edge mompreneurs have over their male
counterparts. As Mani Pavitra, founder of Pampered Moms, a pregnancy-related
services provider, puts it: “Unless you are successfully running your own
family, your business will not work.“
When Mum Hit the Road
Before Suchi Mukherjee moved to
India and set up ecommerce fashion website LimeRoad, she was involved in
scaling up technology businesses in the UK, having held top jobs at eBay, Skype
and Gumtree.
LimeRoad was the inception of an
idea that came to the former investment banker after the birth of her son
Aadit, when she was on maternity leave. “Flipping through the pages, I found a
piece of jewellery I really wanted to touch and buy. I realised then there was
no place where one could access the vast array of amazing products that were
being made and shipped out of India,“ recollects Mukherjee. With the idea in
place for a women's online lifestyle platform, the challenge of turning
entrepreneur with two young children to take care of had just started.
From leaving behind her son (now 4)
who was a few months old and daughter Myra (now 9) in London with her husband,
and travelling every month to India for 15 days, it was a tough year for the
family. “On moving to Delhi, I chose to live as close as possible to my nearest
family. And I traded off putting my kids to bed with spending time with them in
the morning,“ she says, adding that she is blessed with a highly supportive
husband, parents and in-laws.
And while she knows that there are
many `mom things' she obviously misses in trying to be a successful
entrepreneur, being a parent, on the other hand, gives her an enormous corpus
of learning on dealing with people.
Vine and Dine
When Garima Satija gave up a cushy
HR job at 26 to set up a concierge service for experiences ranging from fine
dining to adventure sports in 2011, she was trying to fill in a gap for such
information that many of her friends had spoken to her about.“PoshVine started
from our own need to discover unique foodie experiences in our leisure time. We
started by aggregating premium restaurants and chefs willing to create unique
activities, and later extended to other categories as well,“ she says. Now the
site, which has been extended to six more countries besides India, helps people
and companies to create experiential packages directly on the site.
Balancing work and family was tough
to start with since her husband Richik was building up his own startup
Cloudaria, an intelligent content curation and publishing platform. However,
when her daughter Aria was born 14 months back, Garima faced the real
mompreneurial challenge. “Now I have to enforce a few rules to ensure that I
spend quality time with my child. It is a demanding schedule, especially when
our company is on an upswing, and the team is growing,“ she says. The rules
that she sets for herself include meticulous daily planning so that she can be
back home by 7.30 in the evening and switch off from work till her baby sleeps.
“Easier said than done, given that my husband is also an entrepreneur; it makes
things doubly difficult,“ she says. There's a great deal of support coming in
both from her team members at work and family. “Our parents take turns to spend
time with us taking care of my daughter. There is always a grandparent at home
looking after my daughter,“ she says.
Jewels in her Crown
Rebekkah Kumar decided to take time
off from high-profile corporate career -having worked at Microsoft for nine
years -when she moved to India with her husband and children in 2006. “I wanted
to spend time with my young children Armaan [13] and Simran [11],“ she says.
Unsurprisingly, the engineer and MBA
was soon restless and mompreneurship offered the solution. “I have been
passionate about jewellery since childhood and I have a collection from around
the world. Having lived in India for eight years, I saw a definite market
opportunity for a line of contemporary, modern lightweight jewellery for global
Indians,“ says Kumar, who launched fourseven.in, an online jewellery store, in
early 2014. It was a platform for her to blend some of her designs with her
love for Indian culture and also to explore the ecommerce market which she
feels is “exploding in India“.
Even though many people initially
thought that as a woman and a mother she would be running a `hobby business',
nurturing her startup is an uphill task, and she likes to think of it as her
baby. “My husband, children and family have all been very supportive. They
understand when I have to work long hours or when I need to travel,“ she says.
She makes sure to spend quality time with her children everyday -from reading
to them to letting them teach her the latest game on the phone or helping with
their homework. She feels that having been a `hands-on mom' for years as a
business professional, she understands the balancing act.
Being a mother helps her to engage
better with customers, reckons Kumar, since the target group for her products
ranges from young girls to grandmothers. “I also think that being a woman and a
mother prepares us for relationship management, which is the make or break of
any small business,“ she adds.
Like Mother, Like Startup
When Suman Dash, an elec tronics
engineer, had to quit her corporate job in 2010 as a new mother, she didn't
give up her career hopes. “My husband Vinay Jaiswal, also an engineer, inspired
me to start something of my own and follow my dream of helping people in need,“
she says.
That was the beginning of her
company Vastradi, through which she started selling ethnic Sambalpuri sarees
directly from the craftsmen or karigars through various exhibitions and social
networking sites, having invested only a few hundred rupees to begin with.
“People loved the collection and then we also introduced Indian handcrafted
jewellery which was also an instant hit. In our first week of operations, we
started exporting to various countries around the globe. People loved the ease
with which they could buy jewellery at great prices,“ says Dash.
For Dash, whose husband too joined
her a year and a half back, Vastradi is an opportunity to bring together her
love for ethnic art and craft and her IT skills to support low-income Indian
craftspersons. Dash recently also co-founded Pitaara, an exhibition and event
group for mompreneurs who need support and a platform to showcase their works
or newly formed businesses to a wider audience.
Along with the online store,
Vastradi also has an offline studio in Gurgaon for fashion jewellery. The
challenge so far has been in getting the business model right and connecting
with reliable vendors even while gathering customerpreference data.
“There are many lessons which
motherhood has taught me which I bring to my business as well. Time management
and working smart are a few examples,“ says Dash.
“Vastradi was my brainchild but it
wouldn't have been possible without a strong support system. My husband
believed in my dreams and has always been a mentor and my baby girl is super in
understanding that her mother has to work,“ she adds.
From Baby Steps to Surefooted Strides
Instead of calling herself a
mompreneur, Neeta Maxen laughingly describes herself as “a cor porate dropout
mom“. And one with few regrets -and a handful of startups. There's
KraftdMemories, a boutique firm that customises parties and banquets to the
smallest detail; Poetry, a seasonal corporate gift shop that she runs with two
partners; and My Playdate Café, a virtual social network for little ones and
their parents.
“Unlike many young mothers, I had
left my highprofile job not for my husband, who runs a film production house,
or my kid but because I wanted to have some me-time and catch up with
longforgotten hobbies,“ says Maxen, who quit as group account director with a
CRM analytics company when her daughter was a year and a half.
When her daughter started school at
three, that's when Maxen started thinking about her own enterprise. “My husband
supported my decision and I banked on my creative ideas and craft skills to
start the company, a business that keeps me connected with my kid and helps me
spread joy and have fun.“
To start with, she ran her venture
as a social networking page and was busy putting her home front in place and
getting reliable domestic help. “There is a definite parallel between launching
a business and starting a family. They both need to be created and regularly
nurtured, and both must take baby steps before they can run.“
In her entrepreneurial journey, her
young daughter has been a big support as has been her husband Maxen Joseph
Chakalakal.
She had quit her job to, among other
things, have the pleasure of watching her child grow up but now she feels she
has sprung back in a leadership role.
Mother of Invention
Mani Pavitra is a serial
entrepreneur who began as an orthodontist at Hyderabad's KIMS Hospital and was
part of the team that set up dental clinics in 2010. When the opportunity
presented itself to become a partner in the prestigious Jubilee Hills Clinic
she jumped at it, finally acquiring the entire stock in 2012 and going on to
create her first brand Dentist N Dontist.
She didn't stop there. “Soon after
that, I was pregnant and realised that there was nothing available in Hyderabad
in terms of pregnancy education. I got certified as a lamaze instructor and
that's how Pampered Moms was born,“ she says.
Now the operations cover the entire
gamut of pregnancy fitness, from dancing and fun sessions for pregnant couples
to postnatal weight loss and lactation consultation, all under one roof. Her
newest venture is Pampered Kids, a children's play zone and birthday party and
activity centre. “I have immense support from my husband Pradeep Yarlagadda,
who runs a green business, and my mother,“ says Pavitra.
Pavitra reckons that if she hadn't
been a mother she may have well not been an entrepreneur. “I was best
positioned to understand the gaps in the market and feel that my mompreneurial
ventures helped to fill out those gaps.“ She adds that as a mother and business
woman, she has the best of both worlds.
Family time for her has rubbed off
on her leadership and communication skills. “I never forget that unless I can
look after the needs of my own family, I will never succeed as an entrepreneur
who has to meet and interact with so many different people and adapt to their
needs.“
Fun & Frolic in the Family
Shalini Vij has no problems in
admitting that her sons Sahil, 17 and Shiven, 10, inspired her to make a foray
into the family entertainment business. “We moved back to India after living in
the US for 14 years and I found no places to spend quality and family time with
my kids. We missed the play areas, well maintained playgrounds, entertainment centres
and gaming zones of America,“ says Vij.
That's how the idea of Hang Out, a
family entertainment centre, was born.Vij's company runs two such play areas
for babies, toddlers, tweens, teens and parents -one at the Select Citywalk
mall in Delhi and the other in DT Mega Mall in Gurgaon.
“I depend on my multitasking skills
to run the business which has now scaled up. But I will never compromise on my
quality time with my children; they're definitely my priority, even if it means
juggling between work and household responsibilities,“ says Vij. That she han
dled a job in the US for 23 years, before moving to India, obviously helps her
now in managing the growing business.But she is dependent on her husband
Sundeep for support. “He is from a very different industry sector
(manufacturing), but has always motivated me about my passion project and even
educates himself about the entertainment industry.“
Even as Vij educates herself about
international standards in child and family entertainment trends, she has to often
cut back on family vacations and limit social outings. “But the good thing is
that my kids are involved in my work and go through catalogues, videos of games
and sometimes even travel with me,“ she says. The family spends Friday nights
together and Sunday brunches are with extended family and grandparents for
Vij's sons. And she firmly believes that mompreneurs like her often go that
extra mile to ensure that they don't neglect their children because they are
working.
You've Come a Long Way, Biba
Meena Bindra was not the typical
navy officer's wife even when she started a small tailoring outfit for women's
gar ments from her Mumbai home when her husband had a posting there, way back
in 1988.
“I was married at 19 and a homemaker
till my older son Sanjay went away to a boarding school and the younger one
Siddharth turned seven. But I had seen the opportunity for women's north Indian
ethnic wear in the market and liked to dabble in good design. With both my sons
away in school during the day, I took the plunge and started Biba,“ reminisces
Bindra, who is now 71.
Even today, as chairperson of Biba
Apparels, a company with an annual sales turnover of `650 crore, Bindra gets
involved in designing various lines that the company launches every season.
Back in the late '80s, Bindra had
started with a `8,000 bank loan.“I started with designing and getting 40 salwar
suits tailored, and sold them from my home. What helped me was that I had no
sales targets to meet.“
That she was available for her sons
when they needed her and that her customers were women who came to her home
helped.Today, Biba has emerged as a market leader in the women's ethnic wear
market, with her son Siddharth, 40, at the helm as managing director. In 2013,
Warburg Pincus and Faering Capital picked up a 25.8% stake in the company.
The company and brand have obviously
grown way beyond Bindra could have dreamt of way back in the 1990s. But even
today the mompreneur in her has a simple mantra. “Across India, north, south,
east and west, women have come to accept Indian ethnic suits as their preferred
mode of dressing, whether at work or leisure and celebrations. With our mix and
match range, we are adding western elements to our design and reaching out to
younger clients,“ she says.
|
Ishani Duttagupta
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ETM 8MAR15
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