Success doesn’t see gender. It comes to those who work hard and hustle. Women have owned and operated businesses for decades and are growing in the field of entrepreneurship and developing the field in dynamic terms. We listed out ten such successful female entrepreneurs in the last decade.
Falguni Nayar: Founder, Nykaa
Falguni Nayar is one of the most well-known faces amongst women entrepreneurs in India. After successfully completing 25 years in the financial services industry, Nayar took the entrepreneurial plunge and launched beauty and wellness e-commerce platform nykaa.com in 2012. Today, Nykaa has more than 46 stores across the country and boasts a revenue of Rs 1,860 Crore in 2020. Nayar has indeed made her dream of “creating something successful on her own from the scratch” come true.
Manisha Raisinghani: Co-Founder: LogiNext
She gave up her secure job and a six figure salary in the US to change the way Logistics, one of the most unorganised industries in India, worked. Her start-up, LogiNext Solutions, provides SaaS solutions which improve logistics planning and delivery route optimisation. Raisinghani is among the very few women at the intersection of B2B and logistics in the world. In their six-year journey, LogiNext has grown to more than 200 employees and has raised about $50 million from investors including Tiger Global Management and SteadView Capital.
Malika Datt Sadani: Founder, The Moms Co.
What started as a search for quality baby care products for her daughter eventually led 38-year-old Sadani to launch her own start-up The Moms Co., which is poised to touch Rs 100 crore turnover in its fourth year. From starting a career, taking a break to do an MBA, getting back to work, tying the knot, raising a baby and becoming a busy entrepreneur, Sadani’s journey has been a success.
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Manisha Raisinghani, co-founder of LogiNext, is among the very few women at the intersection of B2B and logistics in the world.
Rati Shetty: Co-founder, BankBazaar
It was Shetty’s harrowing experience of applying for a home loan that propelled her to curate something that simplifies things in the sector. Shetty, along with her husband and brother-in-law, launched BankBazaar in 2008 with an initial capital of Rs 4.5 million and a team of six members. Shetty was convinced that the “future is paperless” and has a registered customer base of over 40 million users on its platform today.
Hemalatha Annamalai: Founder & CEO, Ampere Vehicles
With seed money of 50 Million, Annamalai started mobilising the Indian electric vehicle industry. The idea stirred up in 2007, after she attended a conference in Japan about electric vehicles. The entrepreneur left her well-settled life in Singapore with her husband and two daughters and moved back to Coimbatore in 2008 to start Ampere Vehicles, which designs and manufactures high quality yet affordable electric vehicles. It has seven models of e-scooters at present and plans to enter the global market this year.
Suchi Mukherjee: Founder, LimeRoad
Few years after launching her first women’s social shopping website limeroad.com in 2012, Suchi became the face of e-commerce in India, competing with majors like Amazon, Snapdeal and others. What started as a women-only website ha expanded in menswear, lifestyle and home decor categories throughout the journey, in the last eight years.
Rashmi Daga: Founder & CEO, FreshMenu
This IIM alumni, started working with a start-up before bootstrapping one of her own in 2014. Her first start-up was afday.com, an online store for curated designs from artisans and craftsmen, did not work according to her hopes and was soon shut down. However, she gave a second chance to her passion for cooking and pioneered the concept of app-based food delivery kitchens in the country with FreshMenu. This constant quest of Daga to whip-up interesting food options in the kitchens that deliver freshly cooked food to customers, made the start-up unique as compared to online food delivery portals.
Mansi Gupta: Founder & CEO, Tjori
In 2013, with a personal savings of Rs 10 lakh, Gupta launched lifestyle brand Tjori, with products in the apparel, home, wellness, jewellery, shoes, and bags categories. The theme was to follow the richness of Indian handicrafts with international standards. The company now clocks an annual turnover of Rs 50 crore and caters 195 countries through its e- commerce platform.
Gazal Kalra: Co-founder, Rivigo
With an excellent track record in her academic background, Kalra decided to be risk-taker and build her own business when she met her ex-colleague Deepak Garg over a coffee where the idea of creating a relay truck model, where no driver would drive for more than four-five hours at a stretch and would return home the same day, came up. Today, the company has its own fleet of 3,000 trucks that cover 29,000 pin codes across the country.
Upasana Taku: Founder, Zaakpay and Co-founder, Mobikwik
Taku, along with her husband, built Mobikwik from scratch and now has 32 million users and 100,000 merchants, doing close to 500,000-1,000,000 transactions every day. The 36-year-old, with Ivy league credentials, remains unfazed by competition in the e-wallet sector and is always on a lookout for ‘gaps’ in the industry to fill with technology.
