Meet the mompreneurs
Motherhood sabbaticals are inspiring women to spot
voids in the market and birth new business ventures to fill them
Six bowls come crashing to the floor, scattering
shards of maternal terror. Almost instantly, the culprit finds himself being
lifted by his armpits and set on a high chair.From the vantage point, the
eightmonth-old watches the crime scene being cleared. Thank god, you were
there, her in-laws concur but what if I hadn't been, Radhika Bhalerao wonders,
coaxing the crockery cabinet and later, Google for answers. Soon, doorknobs in
her 2BHK in Thane move up, cushions cover dangerous coffee table edges, locks imprison
glassware and Bhalerao's definition of auditing changes. For this MBA in
Finance, an audit now means crawling under strangers' sofas and inspecting
their toilets.
“Accidents don't give you a prior notice,“ says
33-year-old Bhalerao, a research analyst at a management consultancy who,
during her motherhood sabbatical, found a gap in child-proofing services in
India though it was a 25-yearold industry in the US. “A UNICEF study pointed
out that almost 20 lakh kids world over lose their lives every year due to
injuries at home,“ adds Bhalerao. Soon after this breakthrough, she co-founded
Blossom Child Proofing Solutions which offers safety services to hospitals and
homes across the city by offering products like electrical sockets, latches and
corner cushions (as a buffer for sharp edges). By this virtue, Bhalerao has
unwittingly joined the growing tribe of mompreneurs -mothers who birth a
business soon after they deliver a baby .Given the sheer number of new mothers
cutting their corporate umbilical cords to launch daycare centres, invent
childand-mom friendly apps, publish children's books or start personalized
stationery brands, the womb, it would appear, is a pretty good startup
incubator.
The mompreneur's strength to re-invent comes
primarily from greed -to spend more time with the little one -but that's not
all. Flexi-schedules and worklife balance are still anemic concepts in
corporate India. “How many organizations that encourage women to come back to
work have facilities to take care of young kids?“ asks Ruchita Dar Shah,
administrator of the Facebook group, First Moms Club that has over 27,000
members. “Also flexi-hours can mean mind-numbing downgrades in quality of
work,“ she says. This leads mothers to turn enterprise-hunters.
Watching their tots crawl, babble, fall, read
and grow spark ideas. “I felt I had seen cooking shows, carpentry shows, all
kinds of shows, but never an honest, maybe humorous and helpful show on
cleaning a baby's potty , or giving them a bath, or taking them on a plane,“ says
actor Tara Sharma of Khosla Ka Ghosla fame who started a multi-platform show
called `The Tara Sharma Show' five years ago after her first son Zen was
born.Sharma suffers no illusions of being a superstar but soon after her
pregnancy , her acting offers started drying up. `Never stagnate... always
reinvent yourself ', her late dad, playwright Partap Sharma would often tell
her. “At 72, with 24-houroxygen support, as he had emphysema, dad was still
always doing new things and it really resonated with me that I must create my
own opportunities and my own content,“ says the ambitious actor, who pitched
the idea of a parenting show-cumvlog to husband Roopak, who loved it.“He is now
the co-producer of our kids and our show,“ says Sharma, a mother of two.
Multi-tasking, feels Sharma, makes mothers more
efficient businesswomen but, as it turns out, that's just one of many assets
that make moms better entrepreneurs. In her TED talk, Jill Salzman, author of
Found It: A Field Guide for Mom Entrepreneurs, puts it down to innovating,
multi-tasking and marketing.Her idea is that since motherhood doesn't come with
a manual, women innovate as they go, learn to do several things at once and, of
course, it helps that they like to talk and network. A mother's intuition and tenacity
don't hurt either.
“I became quite the hustler after I became a
mum,“ says Rina Nathani, who learnt to manage time by installing CCTVs at home
to keep an eye on kids for instance -a skill that she suspects helps her
quickly recognize employee strengths and weaknesses. Nathani, who worked as a
director with KPMG for 12 years, now runs Findurclass.com, a ready reckoner for
extra-curricular classes in Mumbai.The idea for the site came after struggling
to find offbeat summer classes for her kids, then 8 and 2. Soon, the idea of an
online directory dawned, her daughter learnt a year's worth of Spanish in a
month in a language class and today, Nathani's workday is harder than the
hardest day of her corporate career. “But it's stimulating since I am constantly
creating,“ says this mompreneur, whose maternal sensibilities help her design
category names such as `mom-approved'. She even runs these categories and icons
by her 10-year-old daughter to ensure they are easy to navigate. Recent ly, in
fact, her daughter even introduced her to Rubik's cube tutors -a breed she
didn't know existed in Mumbai.
Quite often, mompreneurs get business advice
from tots. “Don't put characters on my backpack label. People can't read what's
written,“ two-year-old Rhea told her mother, Sheetal Goel, founder of
personalized stationery brand Cupik Design who soon made it a policy . The name
`Cupik' itself came from her daughter. “It was her first word. She meant
`cupcake,“ says Goel, who was engrossed in growing her graphic design firm till
the day she sketched a fairy and pasted it on Rhea's water bottle. Soon, Goel
was sitting up till 3am fulfilling requests for more kid-friendly characters
and designs from her classmates and their parents. Even her daughter's
pre-primary teacher has placed orders for stationery .
Mompreneurs also have the unique privilege of
watching both their kids and businesses grow simultaneously . Bhalerao, in
fact, wishes she could take her boisterous three-year-old along on houseaudits
for child-proofing. “He will probably find nooks that I may be missing,“ she
laughs.
|
Sharmila Ganesan
|
TOI10MAY15
No comments:
Post a Comment