Women Entrepreneurs take a Centrestage at TATA TIE Stree Shakti awards 2009. New winners emerge

The Stree Shakti awards, an initiative of TIE Mumbai, supported by Tata group recently concluded a glitzy affair on the 12^th December that saw some of the country’s most inspiring women come together on a common platform in a show of strength of the success of women entrepreneurs across the country.

Eight women entrepreneurs were chosen through a panel that comprised the likes of Shikha Sharma, MD, Axis Bank, Ireena Vittal of McKinsey, Sanjeev Bhikchandani of Naukri.com amongst others and was verified by process partner Ernst and Young. The awards that included a trophy, certificate and cash prize of Rs. 1 lakh each were given out under three categories.

Micro Enterprise (Turnover Rs. 1 lakh > Rs. 10 lakh)

1. Anwara Begum, Pialee Enterprise that manufactures saris, dress materials, home linen, etc by hand embroidery (Kamthastitech).
2. Smitaben Jani, Sona Electronics that deals with production, sales and service of electronic instruments.

Small Enterprise (Turnover Rs. 10 Lakh > Rs. 2 crore)

1. Nirmala Pitagoankar, Vivam Infotech – solid waste management
2. Nusrat Jahan Ara, Petals and Ferns, Jammu based organization that grows cut flowers and retails and wholesales them.
3. Pavithra Y S, Vindhya Infomedia Pvt. Ltd., a company that runs a non voice process BPO, builds and manages data and image processing applications and offers web based services.

Medium Enterprise (Turnover Rs. 2 crore > Rs. 25 crore)

1. Gayatri Singh, Q2Amedia, an education content provider to international markets in the pre-k to 12 segments.
2. Sweta Mangal, Ziqitza Healthcare, Equipped life support ambumlances better known as 1298 ambulances.
3. Suvarna Deshpande, Sarvesh Industries, into the manufacturing of corrugated boxes and sheets.

The award ceremony, held at the Trident,Mumbai was an unforgettable experience for the winners. From Nirmala’s proclamation that with support of this kind, she’ll ‘clean the whole India’ to Smitaben’s frank emotion declaring that even though she had been in business for 30 years, she achieved true success only through this award.

The event also saw some well-known speakers take the dias to share their experiences, prominent amongst them being Devita Saraf, CEO, VU Technology, Dr. Mirai Chaterjee, Co-ordinator, SEWA, Vinita Bali, CEO, Britannia, Sanjay Jha, Head of Dale Carnegie.

Stree Shakti is an initiative of TIE Mumbai to recognize the relentless effort and resilience displayed by women entrepreneurs in setting up successful ventures and also a bid to create a platform to help them connect, share and network to form trust based partnerships.

- covered by Pooja Ganeriwala for YourStory