Everywhere you look, there is an Indian woman in pursuit of an entrepreneurial dream. With a GDP growth rate of 8.2%, women product leaders have a whole reason to be bullish. This International Women’s Day, we choose to celebrate pioneering Woman Product Leaders among us, choose to celebrate the success of these efficacious women. This is not a comprehensive list, and if there are some Women Product Leaders whom we have missed and should be in this list, please feel free to email us or drop in a comment and we will add it to the list.
Read along as these women share what advice would they like to impart to aspiring women product leaders. Please find the views in an alphabetical order below.
Anuradha Acharya, Ocimum Biosolutions: CEO with a vision for better health for Indians using technology, Anuradha believes in management as a fine balance between delegating and getting things done. More than often one needs to get theirs hands dirty, she quotes.
Anuradha Bansal, Verity Solutions: Anuradha admires the women who juggle the pressures of corporate life and rear a family. She considers Failure and Success a sinusoidal wave that indicates the state of affairs in the organization during different points in time. Even if one were to wind up an enterprise – the terrific learning that one takes away cannot be ignored. Even the most substantial started small.
Entrepreneurship in common parlance often gets construed as “risky”. To her it’s a misnomer – everything is risky, just that the risk matrix differs.
Pooja Goyal, Intellitots: As an entrepreneur so many benefits which seemed meagre in a corporate. Environment feel like hefty perks be it IT support or HR support or for that matter janitorial support. It is a tough transition especially in the early days when you have to be extremely hands on and set the tone for the company culture. Having said that it is also the most fulfilling opportunity to create something from scratch and shape it and grow it.
What I have learnt in my two entrepreneurial ventures is ‘ a bad decision is better than no decision.
Sairee Chahal, Fleximoms: The co-founder for the most women inspiring start-up, FlexiMoms, assures us product is less about code and more about people skills, conversation and trend spotting. Our constant job is to keep looking for the best people and move their discretion in our favour. Sometimes the best brains don’t come from expected quarters but the most unlikely places hence it’s most important to invest time in ourselves and people around us. And one has to enjoy the process and the journey – the most exciting part.
Sangeeta Patni, Extensio Software: Sangeeta Patni, President, Extensio Software, considers the journey as a worthy mountain to climb. She affirms that entrepreneurship is all about leadership. A product leader will always tell you “What to do” and not “How to do”.
She admits that a woman is a product leader because she has the passion for your product, and vision for her business. To embark on being a Product Leader means being able to have a very clear vision of the value you want to bring to the world, and the immense passion required to execute the vision, and also to be able to successfully make money from it – in face of competition, the technology changes that render the window of opportunity to be really short, and to be able to have confidence in ones ability to change and innovate.
Sangeetha Banerjee, Apartment Adda: Sangeetha is convinced of a woman’s natural virtue of sincere empathy, which enables them to understand Customer Pain Points and pump those into their Product Strategy. The founder for Apartment Adda, Sangeetha shares that while Building or Enhancing a Product substantial forethought is required towards After-Sales Support – Deployment & On-going Support, which is critical for the survival of a SaaS product.
Interestingly, she connects it with a woman’s natural instincts, because when we buy that cosy bulky Sofa, we are not thinking only about the Comfort. Women are thinking how easy or difficult will it be to clean or move around, and whether the maid will double her rates just at the sight of it in her Living Room!
Zeba Zaidi, GameOnIndia: ‘As a woman you lack nothing that would bring you success’, Zeba Zaidi, Co-Founder and CEO, Game On India, believes that the satisfaction you get from running your own business is something worth striving for. The economy in India is perfectly poised to support new business, people are getting more and more open to newer ideas, there are enough funding options out there and all in all it’s a fantastic time to be thinking about your own business. There is a lot of knowledge sharing and avenues where your goals can get support. So my advice would be to just go for it.
Our goal is to highlight what worked for these successful product leaders. Every input is appreciated for raising a new challenge for women in the entrepreneurial world.
As mentioned, if (and we must have) we have missed out on some names, either yours or another you know of, and would like it to be added to the list, please comment below here, or email us.
With Inputs from Kanika Bhatia, Boring Brands