5 Most inspiring Chennai women
Posted on: 08/Mar/2019 4:40:02 PM
Chennai has produced a number of women entrepreneurs in the recent decades. They have ventured into various domains and widened their arena into many: healthcare, logistics, branding, etc. Tamil Nadu notably has the highest number of women entrepreneurs in India. So, this is Live Chennai’s little effort to talk about the success of 5 women entrepreneurs that are absolutely inspiring:
G. Sree Vidhya
G.Sree Vidhya is the Chairperson and Managing Director of Ravindra Services Pvt. Ltd. She does business of Rs 22 Crores turnover across 4 different verticals holding 4000 employees. The company, RSPL is among the pioneering Chennai entrepreneurs across India. They offer security for corporate houses. She got divorced sooner at young age and brings up her daughter as a single parent. They has worked on quite a number of jobs. She has finished her MBA studies at Indira Gandhi National University before starting security and guarding services.
Her journey began when Ravindra Padmanaban (a friend, mentor and business associate of Srree) had given her a job at Oncole Cleaning which was a start-up company. They provided cleaning services locally. They had strong vision towards providing housekeeping services for corporates and then moved onto security services as well. in 2001, her mentor passed away and acquired the company and changed it into Ravindra Services Pvt. Ltd.
It was tough for Sree to work out the security and guarding services. She had to do the night rounds with pepper spray for safety and check out the guards whether they are properly on duty. Currently, close to 15% of her workforce comprise of women. They have now got potential clients including the L&T group. They have now got their arena expanded across housekeeping, plumbing, electrical, temporary staffing, security division.
Madhu Saran
Madhu Saran is a women entrepreneur based in Chennai. She is now a collective voice of Indian women entrepreneurs. She has got selected as Women Entrepreneurship Day Global Ambassador of India. She is the founder of STC Technologies. They are into software testing. She also owns ABC Clinic which is a cosmetic clinic chain having multiplie centres in and around Chennai city. There are also NGOs functional under her name where many women entrepreneurs get backed with entrepreneurial support.
Among her ventures is Mami’s House of Coffee on Wheels or MHC which empowers women from various backgrounds. They provide a different livelihood to women and provide fresh brewed coffee.
Archana Stalin
Archana Stalin is basically a software engineer. She works for myHarvest – a social enterprise where it encourages people in growing food items on roof-top and terrace areas without the use of pesticides. Under MyHarvest, Archana provides soil, seeds, fertilizers and other requisites for roof-top gardening as customized packages. Based on the package you choose, a team from MyHarvest will knock the doors of customers to clearly understand the requirement and supply with plants to grow.
Special guidance for proper management and growth of garden are also offered both online and offline. There are also gardening workshops being organized under MyHarvest where schohool children are taught about proven methods of gardening. They call the initiative ‘Reconnect with Nature’. They have so far worked the scheme with about 4-5 Chennai-based schools.
Vandhana Ramanathan and Jinal Patel
Vandhana and Jinal are marketing professionals based in chennai. They work out based mainly on coffee shops in the beginning days when they started a digital marketing agency. Later on, they understood the need for setting up an office space to invest more time and resources to work without distractions and focus more on their core business. With their personal experience, they ventured into WSquare which is a women-only co-working space based in Chennai. This is to encourage all entrepreneurs for showing professional focus without any concerns about domestic works or personal problems.
This co-working space invites people from all verticals of life. They show extra focus shown on pregnant women and new mothers who find it challenging to work from home. There are a lot of people who quit their jobs especially after giving birth to babies. With Wsquare, they intend to aid such women in getting back to work and structure their own career path. This initiative for incubation provides women entrepreneurs with mentoring and funding as well.
Women out there, grow with all your blood, heart and soul!
Happy women’s day all!
