JOIN US“Business needs confidence. Earlier, when I was asked what I did, my response would be that I run a small business from home. One day, I overheard my husband telling someone, ‘My wife has her own educational start-up’. It completely stunned me and there was a change in my confidence. The biggest thing about being a successful mompreneur is discovering your own self-worth,” she smiles.
We’ve always had mompreneurs, haven’t we? Aunties who made pickles and jams and papads at home or ran beauty parlours or tuition classes from home, when we were young. But the 21st-century mompreneur is not content with keeping things confined within the four walls of her home. She thinks like an entrepreneur and makes sound business decisions. She runs the finances and handles employees, yet she is a mom and manages things at home as well. If you think the pressure is too much, you’re right it is. But the mompreneurs we spoke to drew our attention to the most shining quality that most women have — multitasking! As a mom, her multitasking capabilities reach the zenith.
A fine balance
Children, new ideas, husbands, bursts of energy, in-laws, potential markets, space, passion — the life of a mompreneur is not easy. In fact, it’s quite a roller coaster. In the digital world, we might as well have a meme about what a mompreneur does and what the world thinks she does!
Bengaluru resident Anitha Srinath, who founded Xplor Worldwide P Ltd after 15 years of toiling continuously with her first workplace LIC, says being a mompreneur is an uphill task. “I still do a lot of client calls while I am in the kitchen. When I started, I used to work after I had put my children to sleep; they were 14 and five years old then. I was overworked but I knew I had to fuel this business with everything I had,” she reminisces. From a work-from-home one-woman army, Anitha has successfully grown Xplor Worldwide to a turnover of approximately Rs 7.5 crore, with three branches in Bengaluru and two more in the offing! Anitha’s husband too has quit his corporate job seeing the potential in Anitha’s travel business. Now how many times have you heard a story like that!
Shweta Shetty who runs Web Bazaar in Bengaluru for the last nine years says that the arrival of her son three and a half years ago, didn’t deter her from scaling up her venture. “Small businesses are searched online all the time but they are never found as they are invisible online. We wanted to facilitate their discovery on the web and give them the visibility they deserve. Our mission is to help at least a million businesses in India to get online and get noticed.” Shweta helps local businesses by building affordable websites for them and also by helping them with leads.
To all those wondering if women, moms especially, have any business acumen, think twice before thinking aloud! Taking the company from two people to 80 has been challenging for Shweta of Web Bazaar, but the satisfaction of having helped over 10,000 customers across more than 50 cities in India has been worth that effort. “My venture has won many prestigious awards. We’ve set up a distribution network, built partnerships, set up and closed franchises too and undergone a successful merger!” she rattles off.
Never give up
Devaki says that mompreneurs can gain from each other’s strengths and fill the gaps where the other fails. “My first model — the library — started in 2012 and my subscription service model in 2013. Both failed. After two failures, reinventing myself within the same space was the biggest challenge. I guess what worked the third time around was that I wasn’t alone. We were a team of like-minded women. So we filled in each other’s gaps, gave each other strength!” she reveals.
“When I began, I started with only Rs 20,000 and a desktop with a printer. I was the one handling the ticketing and meeting clients, and even picking up documents and running to the bank,” says Anitha, who is happy to share her success stories with other women who are considering leaving their 9-to-5 routine.
Mompreneurship is gaining respect like never before. And what most women like is the prospect of being their own boss, flexible timings and self-filtering of projects. Devaki says she got extremely bored when she was on a total break. “I’m the kind of person who needs to do something on my own as well. At the same time, I was clear I didn’t want to go back to a stressful job. So this work-fromhome balance worked out best for me.”
And as Shweta puts it, “Coming home to a child who understands your work and asks you ‘How was your day?’ is my ultimate stress buster!”