Pravathy Ramaswamy, chairperson, FICCI FLO talks about the importance of women entrepreneurship

Last weekend in Mumbai amidst the heavy rains, few good women and men got together to celebrate the power of women entrepreneurship. The occasion was Winspiring 2013, an event for women achievers to share their success stories and help motivate each other through their formulae and recipes for achieving success. The event was organized by FICCI FLO – the women’s wing of FICCI. Among the many who shared their stories were – Abha Maryada Banerjee, India’s first women motivational speaker; Nandini Vaidyanathan, founder & mentor CarmaConnect; Vithal Kamath, MD - Orchid Hotels; Arun Duggal, chairman, Shriram Capital; Satya Vadlamani, MD - Murli Krishna Pharma Ltd; Usha Sangwan, ED, LIC; Neeta Lulla, celebrity fashion designer; Leena Mogre, fitness consultant and Vaishnavi from Jai Mahalaxmi Bachat Gat – a women’s group from Dharavi that makes and sells food items to help support their families.

On the sidelines of the event YourStory spoke to Pravathy Ramaswamy, chairperson FLO. Parvathy is also a director at an MNC bank handling the vertical of transactional banking. She says she joined FICCI FLO to fulfill her long harbored dream of helping women come up in life. “I was the eldest daughter in my family and had a very privileged upbringing I would say. I had a lot of empowerment, my father supported me always and I had a lot of say in family matters,” says Parvathy. She says she never had the fear of failure, because her family considered it very normal and part of routine life. “The independence was very liberating for me and helped me a lot in my professional life as well,” says Parvathy. Therefore from starting work while in college to joining Grindlays Bank right at the beginning of her career, Parvathy has always been privileged to have found those opportunities.At the same time, she knew there is a bigger segment of society where women are still struggling for a lot of things in life. And Parvathy’s way of helping them was joining FICCI FLO. It is a national body with the prime objective of women empowerment through the promotion of entrepreneurship and managerial excellence. FLO was established in 1983, as a division of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), which is the apex body of Industry and Chambers of Commerce in India. Today the organization has 10 chapters and nearly 3200 members across India, committed to working towards women empowerment through business women development and capacity building initiatives besides other programmes.

FLO also runs a business consultancy cell in Delhi for potential women and men entrepreneurs to provide consultancy services and extend help in setting up their units and also provide appropriate guidance during the running of their units. Besides a wide range of other activities, FLO also takes and receives delegations abroad to promote bilateral trade, internationalism and fellowship among women.

Parvathy will be in the position of Chairperson for a year, before she moves out as per the procedure followed in the organization. However she says she has set into motion enough things for the new chairperson to continue and grow. “The structure of the organization is such and therefore it is the responsibility of the chairperson to ensure that the work she has started doesn’t come to an end after she has left. There is enough succession planning and processes in place to help the successors,” assures Parvathy.

Her professional role as the director of an MNC Bank she considers no less than an enterprise, which involves controlling cost, setting a roadmap, getting the right talent, having the best strategy to do things well and thereby achieve the best possible outcome. However Parvathy agrees her FICCI FLO role is very different from the banking job. “In the bank everything is very organized, structured and there are enough processes in place. However here things are different, the people we work with, the time we have to execute a task and the background of various people is all too different,” explains Parvathy. However it is the same heterogeneity that helps bring so much raw energy to the tasks at hand she says. Her four-point mantra to deal with all work either at the bank or at FICCI FLO is – planning, commitment, self confidence and accepting setbacks. “Have your eyes trained on the bigger picture and work hard to achieve it, then small hiccups cannot dissuade you,” says Parvathy.