fef777

Photo: Illustration: Vikas Thakur & Saahil Photo: Illustration: Vikas Thakur & Saahil

“My name is Sangeetha Krishnan. I am a Mechanical Engineer; I provide transformer service repairs through electrical contract works.”lnplay

This introduction in a class full of women entrepreneurs from across sectors and states has made everyone turn their heads towards the speaker, a petite woman. That she has been running an all-male team of contractors, electricians and mechanics is yet another testimony to the fact that if a boss lady comes down to owning her space, she will do so—stereotypes and hurdles notwithstanding.

Our class of 64 is full of such women, handpicked through the rigorous globally-run Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women Entrepreneurs Program, run in India by the NSRCEL at IIM-B. Working in ed-tech, agri-tech, fin-tech, IT services, legal services, hospitality, healthcare, food processing, heavy industries, sustainability, design, garment manufacturing, entertainment and media (the sector I am representing)—we are a diverse cohort. Forty-seven per cent of us are first-generation entrepreneurs and 38 per cent are in tech-driven businesses. Thirty-one per cent are co-founders, 33 per cent, solo entrepreneurs.

All of us are in unconventional workspaces (which workspace is not unconventional for a woman!). Many of us are the first generation of financially independent ‘working’ women, largely raised by homemakers, who by the way, work as hard and more, without any appreciation or reward.

The Delhi Detective Who Lets People Think She’s An Astrologer | Women's Day Special

BY Avantika Mehta

A lot of us first-generation women entrepreneurs have made great strides. But scaling up strategies and growth plans don’t inherently come to us despite our innate managerial and leadership capabilities, which are on display with natural multi-tasking and quick decision-making in our homes and personal spaces. At our workspaces, we walk around with imposter syndrome, guilt and an unnecessary dose of humility. Our lives are also consumed by experiences of discrimination, invisibilisation, physical pains, auto-immune diseases caused by stress due to unprocessed emotions, pregnancies, loss of pregnancies, motherhood and primary caregiving responsibilities—basically, grief of all kinds, where women are expected to be the grievers as much as the healers of the grief for the rest of the family. All the women in this classroom have similar kinds of life challenges and concerns despite different ambitions and growth plans. We speak the same universal language—that of sisterhood and female camaraderie.

bt Every artist is an entrepreneur; every writer a hustler. More so a woman, because she has a lot to demand and change in an industry, which has always been a male bastion.

All of us are in desperate need of this intensive and immersive programme tailor-made for women, where we are being taught everything from crafting our elevator pitches to business development to legal structuring to negotiation to best practices in supply chain to marketing to financial planning to business ethics to intellectual property rights to valuation and funding. We learn how to be the badass boss ladies of the unconventional businesses that we are all trying to build.

Sangita Khalsa has been running a custom soft furnishing venture in Ahmedabad since 1993. Her other passion is textile art. It’s a business she built thread by thread. Her husband joined her later. And yet, for years, she was told at meetings, “Madam,fef777 cassino please let sir speak.” After the sudden death of her husband, who was also her strongest ally at work, everyone advised her to ‘take it easy’. It took her another decade to convince her own buyers and clients that she was capable of running a business on her own, and her success and work identity weren’t only defined by her husband’s or her children’s.

How Anita Negi’s Natural Farming Revolution Is Empowering Women

BY Ashwani Sharma

On the contrary, Aanchal Kejriwal, who worked as a banker before she got married and then decided to focus on her family, founded Arrange-It-All, a professional service in creating functional living and working spaces. Her mission: offer a service (predominantly to women) to set up their homes by taking the burden of organising off their shoulders. To flip a stereotype on its head and use it to one’s own advantage is the hallmark of a true entrepreneur. No wonder Kejriwal’s successful business made her husband leave his job to come on-board full-time to help her scale it up further.

Amrita Agrawal is an expert in the IT services sector,who joined her father’s software consulting business a decade ago. From being blatantly ignored in client meetings to now leading the team to service the third generation of her father’s clients, she has come a long way.Palak Chordia chose to carve her own path in design and business. Born into a family of industrialists and then married into another with diverse business interests, she built her own business called ‘Stitch Factory’ to offer solutions for customised uniforms. Marriage and motherhood happened to her in her early 20s,and now that her kids are on their way to becoming financially independent, she has been quietly building her own identity.

Ankitha Manral founded a firm that offers property valuation services, yet another male-dominated sector. Alka Karnik specialises in investment services—again, a service traditionally run by men.

These women speak of some common experiences though. Being ignored in meetings; having to prove again and again that they can deliver; accused of being‘too emotional’; assigned only a certain kind of job; and worst of all—the assumption that they lack authority.

The usual conflict for a working woman is: what to prioritise, and how. The obstacles are too many. While guilt is the biggest inner obstacle, convenient insensitivity all around are obvious external obstacles. It’s an everyday push and pull we endure as women professionals.

The fundamental rule of drama is that there must be conflict and obstacles. And enough motivation for the protagonist to overcome those and learn something significant to progress on the character arc. That’s how interesting characters are written, how stories tug at our hearts. Going by that definition, a woman’s life, while she is navigating her way through the kitchen, aangan (courtyard) and the several Lakshman rekhas—the boundaries drawn by her own loved ones—is a natural repository of drama and riveting stories.

Two Navy Officers On A Global Sailing Mission | Women's Day Special

BY Outlook Web Desk

Hamilton secured his third top-three start of the 2024 season, while out-qualifying Mercedes team-mate George Russell in successive races for the first time this term.

That means he will start at the front of the grid at Spa for the second year in a row, with Verstappen taking a 10-place grid penalty after exceeding the maximum number of power units permitted throughout the season.

By that logic, we should have many more women-led films. And yet, we had to wait till 2024, over 100 years since the beginning of Indian cinema, to really celebrate films made by women. Also, by that logic, we should have had more women in the Indian media and entertainment industry as the key custodians and tellers of their own stories at least by 2024. And yet, the last released ‘OWomaniya!’ report revealed a glaring gender disparity. The department best represented by women was production design—with 24 per cent women in HOD roles, followed by editing at 18 per cent, and writing at 15 per cent. Women’s representation in direction and cinematography continues to stay in single digits.

So, when I am asked what a creative person like myself is doing in a B-school taking lessons on entrepreneurship, I passionately launch into my explanation of how every artist is an entrepreneur; every writer a hustler. More so a woman, because she has a lot to demand and change in an industry, which has always been a male bastion.

It’s the same battle across sectors, across the world.

That’s why women need to lean into each other. That’s why we need more cohorts and consortiums that nurture these boss ladies to continuously reclaim their dreams, spaces and opportunities. We are going to shift the needle dot by dot, no matter what.

(Views expressed are personal)

Anu Singh Choudhary is a Mumbai-based screenwriter and producer

This article is a part of Outlook's March 11lnplay, 2025 Women's Day special issue 'Women at Work', which explores the experiences of women in roles traditionally occupied by men. It appeared in print as 'All The Boss Ladies'