Meet 4 women entrepreneurs whose businesses are raking in crores as revenue
These women entrepreneurs across different sectors like manufacturing, video production and IT are highly profitable and clocking crores in revenue.
It takes the first step to begin any journey, a long and arduous one in the case of entrepreneurship. In fact, one of the common things among successful entrepreneurs and their businesses is the hard work, faith in their vision, and immense research work involved.
HerStory presents four women entrepreneurs who invested their savings in their ventures, had faith in their dreams and are now grossing revenues in crores.
Saily Lad, Founder of Volksara; Pallavi Mohadikar Patwari, Founder of Karagiri; Disha Singh, Founder of Zouk; Deepmala, Founder of The Visual House
Disha Singh, Zouk
Disha Singh knew entrepreneurship was her calling when she was a second year MBA student at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A).
During a trip to Kutch at the time, while exploring local handicrafts, she realised that though her friends loved the designs and the craftsmanship, they did not buy them as the products lacked functionality. She then decided to give a modern and functional spin on these crafts through Zouk, a B2C startup and a vegan brand for bags, wallets and accessories, in 2016.
She also felt that most bags and accessories were replicas of foreign brands sold at cheaper rates and introduced a range of office bags made from ikat, jute, and khadi fabric with contemporary appeal.
With an initial investment of Rs 20 lakh, she launched Zouk’s first product in 2017 and sold in more than 50 exhibitions before entering the online marketplace.
Today, backed by 24 artisans working from the startup’s manufacturing facility in Dharavi, Mumbai, the vegan handmade products have raked in annual revenue of Rs 5 crore.
Pallavi Mohadikar Patwari, Karagiri
As the daughter of a weaver, Pallavi has always been knowledgeable about high quality sarees and started sourcing chikankari sarees and selling them on Ebay to meet her daily expenses as a student at IIM, Lucknow.
In July 2017, the former TATA and Goldman Sachs employee took the entrepreneurial plunge and founded Karagiri along with her husband Dr Amol Patwari with an initial investment of Rs 3 lakh.
Over the last three years, the startup has grown from just five weavers in Maharashtra to working with 1,500 weavers across India and aims to onboard 5,000 weaver families by the end of this year.
Having sold more than 50,000 units in 11 countries including Dubai and the US in the financial year 2019, it has achieved a growth revenue of Rs 12 crore, 400 times the initial invested amount.
Further, the entrepreneurs claim to be on track to generate a revenue of Rs 20 crore for the current financial year, Rs 50 crore in 2021 and Rs 150 crore in 2022.
Saily Lad, Volksara
Saily Lad decided to start up on her own instead of joining her family business, Krystal Group of Companies.
After pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Strategic Management and Consulting from Nottingham Trent University and completing her master’s in Business Consulting from Royal Holloway, University of London, she started Volksara in 2014 as a surveillance security business solution, which has now transformed into a 100 percent IT business.
Volksara works with smart cities and towards cybersecurity development and has been associated with cities like Gondia, Matheran, Nashik, Namchi, and Pimpri-Chinchwad. One of its large-scale projects include tech deployment at the Kumbh Mela, of the largest festivals in the world.
The startup’s revenue stood at Rs 150 crore as of March 2020 with an impressive projection of nearly Rs 300 crore for the following year.
Deepmala, The Visual House
Radio and TV journalism graduate Deepmala experimented with production and filmmaking by freelancing with various production houses after quitting her job as a journalist.
She started The Visual House, a video production company and creative communications agency in 2010. The company manages a host of projects ranging from documentaries and short films to commercial and corporate videos in the form of explainers and animated videos. It also provides visually driven content including posters, radio jingles, comic strips, and FAQs, as part of various campaign projects.
The Faridabad-based startup received its first project worth more than Rs 1 crore in 2015 from the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). It also counts on organisations like WHO, UNICEF, UNAIDS, UN Women, Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of External Affairs, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, and corporate companies such as BCG India, among its clients.
Started with an initial investment of Rs 10,000, the startup now makes Rs 5 crore in revenue and has also received the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 2018 for Best Emerging Ads, Documentary, and Short Films Production House.
Edited by Rekha Balakrishnan