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Winners in the world of enterprise
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The world is full of opportunities. For those who are willing to take risks, the sky is the limit. KAUSALYA SANTHANAM talks to some successful women entrepreneurs in the city.
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WORTHWHILE OCCUPATIONS. Organisational abilities. Marketing skills. Enterprise and efficiency. Novel ideas. This is a dynamic face of the WOMEN of Chennai today. Entrepreneurship is bringing empowerment to women across the board by providing financial independence and giving them confidence and self-esteem. Business ventures, whether big or small, make a substantial difference to the female sense of well-being. They make you feel you are in charge of your life and provide an essential sense of worth and self-reliance.
The modern Chennai woman is different from the homebound woman of the past to whom selling or running a business carried a stigma which she found difficult to shake off. The cultural contours and attitudes of the city have changed regarding gender. Women who hesitated a hundred times about stepping into the nearby hotel for a cup of coffee may now have hotel chains of their own. Those who wouldn't dream of taking a bus to the nearby cinema may well be into the nitty-gritty of filmmaking and distribution.
Mythili's could be the archetypal success story. Married into a conservative family at 18, she was not allowed to talk to her brothers-in-law or even wear synthetic saris as her in-laws thought they were figure revealing. Today, attired in a stylish suit, she sits in her tastefully done-up office discussing multi-crore orders with the heads of multinational firms. And her husband is the manager of her garment export business.
There are any number of women like Mythili who have vaulted the barriers of conditioning and reaped the rewards of a globalised economy. Now the woman entrepreneur can choose to be stationed at home and be in touch with the world outside, cater for the family's needs and yet pursue her dream of economic independence. Or she could be living out of the suitcase following her target with the sharpened senses of the lone hunter, getting the thrill of closing in on the kill with the bagging of each new contract.
These are success stories of women of all ages who through their traditional skills such as making papad or pickles or through non-conventional initiatives are able to make it on their own, shrugging off dependency on men. Whether they have inherited the mantle or are first generation businesswomen, they are calling the shots, shrewdly. In a city where business enterprise was frowned upon in women and where it was considered genteel in middle and upper class women to limit themselves to using their talent for `handwork' to make gifts and giveaways for family members and friends, the focus has changed. From princesses to flower sellers, the motto is discover your potential and develop your personality and the winner is - Woman.
From manufacturing engineering equipment to the fashioning of handicrafts, designing and selling saris to putting up textile units, screen printing to exploring cyber space, setting up mobile laundries to teaching women to become mobile through driving schools, event managing to predicting how political events shape the stock exchange scene, supplying household staff to starting beauty parlours, the entrepreneurship of women is evident in endless ways. And they are pulling it all off with an élan and a keen business sense which sometimes even they did not know they possessed. Entrepreneurship in the animation industry, a new concept, and community development is catching on.
Entrepreneurship is not an easy road. One needs to be tough and strong and above all, tenacious. It is much easier to get your lunch box ready, sling on your office bag and head for the security of the nine to five job. But those who take a deep breath for the roller coaster ride find the experience heady. For, it requires the same dare devil spirit and the ability to take risks that bring in people by the hundreds to the amusement parks. It is a tough world out there where money is the motivating factor and you compete back to back with the men. As one highly successful entrepreneur says, "Gender plays no role in this field. If you have the potential, you survive. If you don't, you close shop." Educational qualification is not that important but sound business sense is and so too the courage to take the right decision at the right time. When you enter a big business, you have to learn to handle unpleasantness — coping with demands for bribes, warding off men who try to make passes, handling sexist remarks. Don't expect concessions because you are a woman. You have to fight it out, learn not to cry and complain constantly - that is entrepreneurship. Drive, dedication and the will to strive make a successful businessperson. Since the area is so vast, randomly selected interviewees give us an idea of what is happening in Chennai — why women have taken to a particular field and how well they are coping.
Known as one who is unafraid to take risks, Annapurna Prasad is a second generation entrepreneur who along with her two sisters now runs her father's multicrore business interests. With a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Masters in Food and Agricultural engineering as also in engineering management, she symbolises the modern woman entrepreneur who is equipped with educational qualifications as well as the drive to run a huge business. The family's interests range from manufacturing power tillers to trading in tractors and bulldozers. "My father was a pioneer in agricultural mechanisation in Tamil Nadu and I like to take this forward." She says that though there is a steep rise in the number of women entrepreneurs in general in the last few years, there are very few in the field of engineering unlike in Information Technology. "As women we definitely need to work harder than men and be smarter to succeed," says Annapurna.
Getting the right ideas at the right time can be crucial to success. If the scheme is fairly new and what's better, if you go where no one has gone before, the odds are that you will win. Shobana Ramesh after a trip to London in 1985 threw up her safe job in a leading firm to set up a courier service impressed by the way the bag she carried for a friend was picked up by a courier and reached the other end of London for a pound! One thing led to another and today Shobana'a card is crammed with the activities and business units she heads, it can barely hold all that she does — from HRD and cab services to furniture making. At her small-scale unit at the SIDCO estate in Ambattur, she manufactures electric meter boxes. "Everyone should learn a skill and time management is important, though entrepreneurship offers you flexible time," says Shobana who finds no trouble in managing her employees, some of whom have been picked up by the police and spent time in jail for small offences and have since been rehabilitated at her firm. "My employees have been with me for 15 years," she beams. "It is important to iron out problems immediately and to take good care of them by providing school fee for their children and attending to their medical needs." Society's attitude and double standards can be irksome. If a man comes home late, people remark on how hard he works for the family. If a woman does so, they blame her for neglecting her family, she says.
But almost all those interviewed stress that it is still a woman's responsibility to look after the home and family and they have to juggle their jobs with cooking, cleaning and taking care of the needs of husband and children. But a double income certainly helps. Loans are a problem when you want to start a business. Though banks have schemes for women entrepreneurs, they demand collateral.
(To be continued)
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