Meet the 4 women entrepreneurs whose businesses are raking in crores in revenue
As more and more women throw their hat into the entrepreneurial ring, HerStory meets four women entrepreneurs who started small, dreamt big, and went on to earn crores in revenue.
Entrepreneurship isn’t easy: it’s a 24X7 commitment that blurs the lines between personal and professional lives.
A report by Google and Bain & Company in February 2020 revealed that women’s entrepreneurship can help advance the cause of financial inclusion of women in India. The report says that 13.5 to 15.7 million women-owned enterprises make up 20 percent of all enterprises in the country, a rise from 14 percent to the current 20 percent over the last decade.
(From L to R clockwise) Sanjana Patel, Co-founder of La Folie; Bhavna Juneja, Founder of Infinity and FeelMpowered; Vidushi Kanoria, Co-founder of Soxytoes; Avni Kaul, Founder of NutriActivania
As more and more women throw their hat into the entrepreneurial ring, we meet four women entrepreneurs who started small but dreamt big, and went on to ring in crores in revenue.
Sanjana Patel,
Sanjana Patel went from being an admirer of edible arts and chocolate as a 14-year-old to running a successful desse rts business. The latest offerings on her menu are unique chocolate recipe experiments. This includes cacao beans in fermentation and Silk Route, a chocolate bar with flavours of pistachio, cardamoms, nutmeg, and Indian rose petals.
The chocolatier's exotic range of desserts were fairly new to Indians when she founded La Folie with her husband, Parthesh Patel, in 2014. But, she soon tasted success. Started with an initial investment of Rs 1.5 crore, the business clocked revenue worth over Rs 6 crore last year alone.
Sanjana honed her pastry skills at École Grégoire Ferrandi, Paris, and Le Cordon Bleu, London, and has rich experience from working with renowned chefs like Pierre Hermé, Jean-Charles Rochoux, Patrick Roger, Camille Lesecq, and Olivier Bajard in Europe.
Two years ago, the entrepreneur couple decided to approach the business, with a focus on mindful sustainability. They began to source ingredients like cacao from cooperatives that worked with indigenous people in India, South and North America, and Africa, and switched to recyclable products, among other things.
After COVID-19 broke out in India, the patisserie has cut its menu by half and is doing about 65-70 percent of its usual business.
Bhavna Juneja, Infinity and FeelMPowered
Serial entrepreneur Bhavna Juneja founded pharmaceutical and life sciences startup Infinity in 2013. Headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, it provides life science enterprise-level IT services for biotech, pharmaceutical and medical device companies globally. Infinity, which has a team of over 700 people across India, Canada and the UK, clocks annual revenues worth $3.5 crore.
Her most recent venture, MPowered, is a Gurugram-based asset management startup that was founded in June 2020. A couple of months into the business, the startup has already raised $ 21 million as part of its pre-Series A round from a group of US-based HNIs.
Interestingly, Bhavna began her journey as a door-to-door salesperson at 17 to ease the financial burden on her mother. She went on to contact buyers listed on Indian Trade Promotion Organisation and international buyers, and secured a commission of $3,000 from US-based entrepreneur and investor David Dweck. During an interaction with HerStory earlier, she said life has come full circle: from her early days in India to moving to the US in 1996, and now starting up in India.
Vidushi Kanoria,
Millenial entrepreneur Vidushi Kanoria teamed up with Aayush Goenka, who has two decades’ experience in leading a white label socks manufacturing and exporting company. Together, the duo is cracking the socks industry by enticing millennials and Gen Z with quirky socks designs featuring internet trends, millennial lingo, and other themes based on pop culture shows, food, and cute animal prints.
Priced between Rs 200 and Rs 250, the socks are available on the startup’s website and leading ecommerce platforms.
Customers can also buy socks with a monthly subscription plan. Post COVID-19, the startup has also started designing masks.
Started with a seed capital of Rs 1.5 lakh in 2018, the startup has been profitable since inception and recently raised an undisclosed amount of funding from a Gurugram-based based angel network.
Soxytoes registered Rs 3 crore revenue in two years of inception and is now on track to clock revenue of Rs 5 crore in the current financial year.
Avni Kaul, NutriActivania
From following fitness and nutrition magazines as a school child to pursuing a master’s in food and nutrition from Delhi University, entrepreneur Avni Kaul is now living her passion as an entrepreneur. Initially, she had to don multiple hats, including that of an accountant, secretary, housekeeper, and consultant.
Registered as a company in 2016, Delhi-based wellness startup Nutri Activania offers various services, including child nutrition, sports nutrition, diabetes management, gastrointestinal health, pre- and post-natal nutrition, cardiovascular health, senior citizen diet plans, and special wedding nutrition plans. Primarily based on the client’s requirements, the nutritionist-entrepreneur urges customers to commit for at least three months to see change.
Started with an initial investment of Rs 10 lakh, the startup witnessed 35 percent growth in FY19 and clocked an annual revenue of Rs 1 crore.
A certified diabetes educator from Project Hope and the International Diabetes Federation, Avni says her aim is to help increase productivity and efficiency, and ensure a quality lifestyle through diet, which also helps manage chronic medical conditions.
(Edited by Teja Lele Desai)