This woman entrepreneur’s startup uses tech and data to drive equitable solutions in the workplace

In 2011, Mridvika Raisinghani returned to India after quitting her job at Ernst & Young in New York, without a plan in place.

After working with secondary mortgage industry clients, her career journey flipped completely with this one momentous decision.

She reveals that, very early on in life, there was a deep realisation that everything she had access to was simply a function of the “ovarian lottery she had lucked out on.”

“I was born in a family where my parents were supportive of my dreams, aspirations and career goals. This was defined by the education I had access to. So, I wanted to do something in this space—providing access to quality education,” she tells HerStory.

The decision, she says, was not too difficult. Her mother had worked with the World Bank to implement Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan with the Rajasthan government for a long time. 

On her vacations in India, Raisinghani followed her mother to remote towns and was able to see what developmental organisations like UNICEF and the World Bank were doing at the grassroots level.

Understanding the ecosystem

Raisinghani joined the non-profit Teach for India’s team as its first fund-raising hire. 

In the five-and-a-half years Raisinghani spent at Teach for India, she gained experience as a philanthropic fundraiser. 

With the startup ecosystem coming into its own, she wanted to see how startups could raise funds from venture capitalists, private equity players, and angel investors. 

She joined edtech company Mindseed and supported the founders in managing their Series A fundraise and deploying capital. She understood how new and special projects are implemented. She later joined Shortlist, an HR tech company, to lead the advisory business line.

“By May 2022, I realised I had been working for over 18 years with purpose-driven organisations. I took a pause and opted for a three-month sabbatical to see what my next North Star was going to look like,” she says.

Around this time, Raisinghani also got accepted into the Antler programme–a residency programme for startup operators who wanted to see if entrepreneurship was the right direction for them.

She also ran a podcast called Just an Ordinary Mom, documenting conversations with women who had chosen and embraced motherhood and continued to work despite the odds. 

After conversations with 25 women, Raisinghani was exposed to a body of work and statistics around the declining participation of women in the workforce. One particular study caught her attention; a report by the Centre for Monitoring of Indian Economy revealed that for the period of January to April 2022, female labour force participation was at just about 9% as against 66.4% of male labour force participation.

“I thought, where is the remaining 91%? My own microcosm and echo chamber made me feel that all well-educated urban women were probably working in some capacity or the other. There was no data to figure this out,” she says.

Data for equitable workplaces

Speaking to over 40 heads of HR and diversity and inclusion professionals, she tried to understand what organisations were doing to change these numbers. She also spoke to over 300 women for data insights.

“I understood that this space is very data deprived. There was no system or data to point out what programme or benefit was needed to intervene or impact women in the workplace. The second realisation was that organisations believe women leave because of the three Ms: marriage, motherhood or migration/mobility. While all three of them were true, there were also a lot of unseen reasons,” she explains. 

One reason was rooted in hiring because there was less focus on retention.

Raisinghani combined these four problem areas and used technology to address them. Thus, Sama came into being. The organisation’s mission is to advance gender equity in the workforce by building an AI tech tool to provide workforce insights, which in turn can help retain urban women in employment.

She elaborates, “One of our solutions is a diagnostic tool—a survey-based instrument that is rolled out in companies to gather over 130 variables and data points. These are sliced and diced to offer a dashboard of insights, ranging from allyship and belongingness scores to safety and a whole host of perceptions and experiences employees face within the company.”

The system then makes recommendations of interventions and programmes organisations should deploy. 

Another component is an attribution engine that tracks organisation metrics and HR metrics of every programme that the company invests in. This measures impact and helps the organisation move beyond just ‘being nice’ and focus on initiatives that are more business-case driven.

Still an educational journey

Sama has curated an ecosystem of over 50-60 organisations in the space of financial literacy, gender sensitisation, infrastructure support, and more that organisations can access from one place. These are partners who deliver their services and programmes to the organisation.

Raisinghani says it took around eight months to build the product in 2022. There are eight paying clients. She admits it’s an uphill battle although the response is positive. 

“For most organisations, it is still an educational journey. Why is this going to impact your bottom line? Why is hiring more women or diverse candidates good for your business? Also, because it's a B2B enterprise grade SaaS tool, our sales cycle takes anywhere between four to six months,” she points out.

Sama has also received government support from Elevate Karnataka by way of funding to implement its tool in around 25-30 MSMEs.

“We;ve been engaged by the Government of Karnataka for a 12-month window to implement it in IT companies in Bengaluru and Hyderabad for a report that will culminate into a white paper of sorts around what the small to medium businesses in the country need and how diversity and inclusion is equally important for them to help them grow,” she says.

Raisinghani says being a bootstrapped startup has been challenging. But being a part of programmes like StrongHer Ventures and the Aspiring Women Entrepreneur Tech programme with the US consulate will hopefully help Sama scale.

She believes women entrepreneurs don’t have access to networks like men do. 

“I am a woman who chose to be an entrepreneur. I am also a mother to two pre-teens. I cannot possibly find time after 8 or 9pm to network. And there my access to networking opportunities is limited. Also, finding a CTO has been challenging because there are very few women with a technical background who might be equally passionate about this problem or space,” she says.

(The story has been updated to correct a typo.)