A Day to Salute all mother's and successful Mompreneurs who nailed it

If you haven't figured it out yet who are mompreneurs, they are the great moms who choose to start up a business while bringing up children. And often these moms are those who gave up corporate jobs-many of them in leadership positions- to first turn mother and then marry maternity with entrepreneurship.

SUCHI MUKHERJEE ( CEO-LIMEROAD, an e-commerce fashion portal)

Suchi Mukherjee moved to India and started her e-commerce fashion website LimeRoad, she was involved in scaling up technology businesses in the UK, having held top jobs at eBay, Skype, and Gumtree.

LimeRoad was the inception of an idea that came to the former investment after the birth of her son Aadit when she was off on her maternity leave. while Flipping through the pages I found a piece of jewellery I really loved which I wanted to touch and buy it. I then realised that there was no place where one could access the vast array of amazing products that were being made and shipped out of India. recollects Suchi. With the idea in mind for a women's online fashion jewellery lifestyle platform, the challenging of turning entrepreneur with two young children to take care of had just started. It was a really tough time for the family as husband and daughter were in London and travelled every fortnight to India. On moving to Delhi, I chose to live as close as possible to my nearest family. And I traded off putting my kids to bed with spending time with them in the morning, she says, adding that she is blessed with a highly supportive husband, parents and in-laws.

And she knows that there are many mom things she obviously misses in trying to be a successful entrepreneur, being a parent, on the other hand, gives her an enormous corpus of learning on dealing with people.

VINE AND DINE

When Garima Satija gave up a cushy HR job at 26 to set up a concierge service for experiences ranging from fine dining to adventures sports in 2011, she was trying to fill in a gap for such information that many of her friends had spoken to her about.

Poshvine started from our need to discover unique foodie experiences in our leisure time. we started by aggregating premium restaurants and chefs willing to create unique activities, and later extended to other categories as well, she says.

vine and dine has spread its wings to six more countries besides India, helps people and companies to create experimental packages directly on the site. Balancing work and family was tough to start with since her husband Richick was building up his own startup Cloudera, intelligent content curation and publishing platform. However, when her daughter Aria was born, Garima faced the real mompreneurial challenge.

"Now I have to enforce a few rules to ensure that I spend time with my child. It is a demanding schedule, especially when our company is on upswing, and the team is growing, says Garima. Her planning includes that she gets backs home by 7:30 in the evening and switch off from work till her baby sleeps.

She says she has abundant support coming in both from her team members at work and family.

THE JEWELLER- REBEKKAH KUMAR

She decided to take time off from high-profile corporate career having worked at Microsoft for nine years when she moved to India with her husband and children in 2006. "I wanted to spend quality time with my young children Armaan and Simran she says.

As she soon got restless and momentrepreneurship offered a solution. I have also been passionate about jewellery since childhood and I have a collection from around the world. Having lived in India for eight years, I saw a definite market opportunity for a line of contemporary, modern lightweight jewellery for global Indians, says Kumar, who launched four-seven.in, an online jewellery store, in early 2014. It was a platform for her to blend some of her designs with her love for Indian culture and also to explore the e-commerce market which she feels is exploding in India.

Many people initially thought that as a woman and a mother she would be running a 'hobby business', nurturing her startup is an uphill task, and she likes to think of it as her baby. "My husband, children and family have all been very supportive. They understand when I have to work long hours or when I need to travel, she says. She makes sure to spend quality time with her children every day- from reading to them to letting them teach her the latest game on the phone or helping with their homework. She feels that having been a 'hands-on mom' for years as a business professional, she understands the balancing act.

Being a mother helps her to engage better with customers, reckons Kumar since the target group for her products ranges from young girls to grandmothers. " I also think that being a woman and a mother prepares us for relationship management, which is the make or break of any small business," she adds.

MOTHER OF INVENTION

Mani Pavitra is a serial entrepreneur who began as an orthodontist at Hyderabad's KIMS Hospital and was part of the team that set up dental clinics in 2010.

When the opportunity presented itself to become a partner in the prestigious Jubilee Hills Clinic she jumped at it, finally acquiring the entire stock in 2012 and going on to create her first brand Dentist N Dontist.

She didn't stop there. Soon after that, I was pregnant and realised that there was nothing available in Hyderabad in terms of pregnancy education. I got certified as a Lamaze instructor and that's how Pampered Moms was born, she says.

The operations cover the entire gamut of pregnancy fitness, from dancing and fun sessions for pregnancy couples to postnatal weight loss and lactation consultation, all under one roof.

She has immense support from her husband Pradeep Yarlagadda, who runs a green business, and her mother says Pavitra. Pavitra says that if she hadn't been a mother she may well not be an entrepreneur.

I was best positioned to understand the gaps in the market and feel that my mompreneurial ventures helped to fill out those gaps. " she adds that as a mother and businesswoman, she has the best of both worlds.

BIBA- WHO REALLY MADE IT BIG IN TEXTILE BUSINESS

MEENA BINDRA was not the typical navy officer's wife even when she started a small tailoring outfit for Women's garments from her Mumbai home when her husband had a posting there, way back in 1988.

She was married at 19, and a typical homemaker till her older son Sanjay went away to a boarding school and the younger one Siddharth turned seven. But she says, I had seen the opportunity for women's north Indian ethnic clothing in the market and liked to dabble in good design. with both my sons away in school during the day, I took the plunge and started Biba, reminisces Bindra, who is now 71.

Even today, as chairperson of Biba Apparels, a company with an annual sales turnover of Rs 650 crore, Bindra gets involved in designing various lines that the company launches every season. Back in the late '80s, Bindra had started with an Rs 8,000 bank loan I started with designing and getting 40 salwar suits tailored, and sold them from my home. What helped me was that I had no sales targets to meet.

That she was available for her sons when they needed her and that her customers were women to her home helped. Today Biba has emerged as a market leader in the ethnic wear market, with her son Siddharth, 40, at the helm as managing director. The company and brand have obviously grown way beyond Bindra could have dreamt of back in the 1990s. But even today the mompreneur in her has a simple Mantra.