[100 Emerging Women Leaders] This entrepreneur means business and is leading the way for affordable sustainable living
Pooja Monga is the founder of Saltpetre, a sustainable lifestyle brand.
It is easy to walk the path of success travelled by others, but laying down the road on your own is a different ball game altogether. Pooja Monga is among those few who decided to do so.
“I guess not having any family background in business is exactly what piqued my interest in entrepreneurship,” she adds.
An MBA graduate, Pooja knew that entrepreneurship will be her end goal. But she wanted to get more exposure and so, worked in companies like Hindustan Unilever, Hero MotoCorp for almost a decade.
In 2015, Pooja was handling a project related to sustainability for HUL. Sustainability was a very nascent topic around that time. After talking to multiple stakeholders in the sector, Pooja found her calling in building a sustainable brand. Thus, in 2017, she founded
, a sustainable lifestyle brand.“Sustainability is not just a small trend. There is no option available for the world and everyone has to move in this direction. I am working towards making sustainable living easy to afford and accessible for all,” Pooja adds.
However, having no one in her family to guide her in her entrepreneurial journey posed a significant challenge. She opted for secondary sources of information like magazines, YouTube videos and read about entrepreneurs who have walked the path before.
Speaking about conscious and unconscious biases, Pooja says that bias will never go away mainly because it is the way humans sift through the large volumes of information that come their way.
“Gender, age, motherhood, entrepreneurship, you can only imagine the kind of biases that play here. But I stay focused on my business because if people have biases then it is their problem, not mine,” Pooja says.
Advising future women leaders, Pooja says, “Make people understand that you mean business and that you are serious, talk facts and don’t let others pull you down.”
Edited by Affirunisa Kankudti