“International Women’s Day (IWD), also called International Working Women’s Day is celebrated on March 8 every year. In different regions the focus of the celebrations ranges from general celebration of respect, appreciation and love towards women to a celebration for women’s economic, political, and social achievements. Started as a Socialist political event, the holiday blended in the culture of many countries, primarily in Europe, including Russia. In some regions, the day lost its political flavor, and became simply an occasion for men to express their love for women in a way somewhat similar to a mixture of Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day. In other regions, however, the political and human rights theme designated by the United Nations runs strong, and political and social awareness of the struggles of women worldwide are brought out and examined in a hopeful manner. This is a day which some people celebrate by wearing purple ribbons.” – Wikipedia (International Women’s Day)
This March at Startup Saturday Hyderabad we celebrated Women’s Day by bringing together women entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds onto one platform in order to learn from their entrepreneurial experiences. We had 12 speakers in all, the maximum a Startup Saturday Hyderabad has ever had. We had a mix of legal expert, doctor, scientist, engineer, designer, and architect. The speakers shared their experiences and learnings in their entrepreneurial journey. The audience was left wanting for more as the speakers shared the gripping stories of their enterprises.
Here’s what the women entrepreneurs had to say-
Harini Madhira – Cisne for Arts
Harini works in event management industry which is a male dominated industry. She is passionate about Indian classics. Her company organises corporate events as well as public ticketed events primarily to promote Indian classics. One of the biggest challenges she faces is managing different sets of people.
Vaishali Neotia – Merxius
Merxius is in the Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality space. They have already achieved tremendous success in terms of various awards and prizes across the globe. She calls herself a rebel in a marwadi family. Vaishali pointed out how essential it is to have a co-founder with complimenting skill-sets. She also stressed on the importance of a mentor and that a structured partnership deed is always helpful. Vaishali also completed the prestigious Ignite program from Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Mahalakshmi – ViralBolt (Product Demo)
Mahalakshmi, co-founder of Possibillion Technologies, introduced their latest offering to the audience, named ViralBolt. As the name suggests, ViralBolt is a viral marketing tool that can be used to run social media campaigns. It offers incentives to the users of their app who share the advertisement on their social media profile. A marketer can run campaigns within defined physical boundaries in which he/she wishes to target the audience.
Lalitha Yanamandra – Reasoning Global eApplication Pvt. Ltd.
Lalitha stressed on the need to develop technologies to reach the communities. She also partnered with BBC to educate students. She believes in promoting education to the right target.
Takbeer Fatima – DesignAware
Takbir is an architect with a Master’s degree from London. She strongly believes in making design accessible. Her role as an architect comes with multiple challenges like long hours at work, low pay, and less than 20% women architects in India. DesignAware is focused on creating transformable, reusable structures. They set an example by redesigning an abandoned home in Hyderabad. DesignAware also creates flexible furniture.
Manojna Yeluri – Artistik License
Manojna started Artistik License with an aim to help start-ups, so this is essentially a start-up that helps start-ups. She graduated from Nalsar. Her career changed completely when she quit a job at a law firm and began helping independent artists with low assistance.
Alekhya – Bonsoul
Alekhya is a national level Tennis player and this took the audience with surprise. She is an engineer with a Masters degree in Interior design from New York. Her company is also a franchisee of FabIndia. She achieved tremendous success with optimised location based rewards/discounts for customers of wellness centers.
Neelima – MediaMint
Neelima completed her engineering from CBIT, Hyderabad and Masters from USA. She worked in the banking sector with Wells Fargo for five years. In 2002 she started food business that flopped. Then she co-founded Mediamint that has been in business for over four years employing more than 200 people.
Featured speakers:
Karthi Subbaraman – OGHMA Design
Karthi started her career as a programmer. She had a particular interest in Anthropology, human computer interaction. As fortune would have it, she had to move to Singapore for her kids. She joined HP and resigned on the 3rd day itself as she did not appreciate the regular boring job. She continued working for HP and went on to find out 1386 issues with the existing HP printers within a week. She was instrumental in changing the way printers work. She conducted 1200 studies for reinventing the architecture, worked towards a new UI, and eventually transformed the entire industry. She then moved to India, and is now focused on working with start-ups. She strongly advocates the philosophy to stay focused and change the world.
Mahima Datla – Biological Evans
Mahima comes from a strong family of well-educated individuals. She was very lazy to be an engineer and hence took up a business course and managed to get a superficial understanding of business. She is pained with the fact that the highest number of kids die of malnourishment on fifth day of birth in India. She took charge of her fathers’ vaccine business and within ten years has emerged debt-free. She had a huge challenge in raising capital as she was looking to raise capital thrice the revenue they were making. She takes pride in the fact that they now make vaccines for the world. Her company recently signed a contract with the Melinda-Gates Foundation to supply their vaccines to the poor and needy in over 60 countries.
Dr. Subhadra – Transcell Biologics
Dr. Subhadra is a scientist turned Entrepreneur. For her, entrepreneurship seemed a logical choice after having earned years of experience researching. She was a part of the technical advancements in stem cell research and development activity. She started her company in India in 2009 and strongly believes that technology is translating human vision to reach the needy. She also runs a stem cell bank based out of Hyderabad that picks up samples from across the country. She is currently looking for individuals who can join their company to take care of their online presence.
Dr. Vijaya Krishnan – Healthy Mother and Wellness Care
Dr. Vijaya started her career as a physical therapist. She teaches the LAMAZE philosophy of giving birth which teaches how a body functions. Very few people have knowledge of Lamaze or options of child birth. She started up in 2009 as a part of a hospital. Since then she has achieved over 92% normal birth rate in clinics. Dr. Vijaya ended the talk by mentioning that during the delivery, a woman gets the most power she ever will in her lifetime.
Written and Compiled by
Srikanth Soni and Anil Maddu
Our awesome Headstarters @ Hyderabad!