Three Self-Made Women Entrepreneurs In India Whose Journey Will Inspire You

Today women are at the forefront of development. From space to corporate board room, women are taking centre stage everywhere. Entrepreneurship, which has long been men’s territory, is now rapidly changing. Today women in India are charting their own paths in the entrepreneurial space starting their own enterprise, their own start-ups, raising funds and heading their own enterprises.

This Women Entrepreneurship Day, let’s look at some of these women who dared to follow their hearts, challenged the status quo and make their mark in their respective industries.

Baruni Verma

Baruni Verma is the founder of the minimalist jewellery brand Starkle. An alumna of the University of Cambridge and University College London, Baruni is currently CEO of Starkle. From product design and development, process sourcing, branding, content creation, marketing, and supply chain management to inventory and logistics management, she has extensive experience and looks after all aspects of the brand.

It was an acute frustration with the market offerings of jewellery that led to the creation of Starkle. She looked and the market offering and saw that artificial jewellery pieces would tarnish quickly and would have to be discarded which can feel like a waste of money. Gold and diamond pieces made by traditional jewellers had outdated and no longer connected to the new set of consumers. On the other hand, pleasing and ostentatious designs were highly overpriced. Frustrated with the market offering, she set out to create a fine jewellery brand that would appeal to the young generation with exceptional design and pieces that are trendy and would suit a variety of budgets and have resale value.

Starkle currently creates; everyday affordable jewellery made from hallmarked gold and certified natural diamonds and is targeted to consumers around aged 21-40. Apart from its online presence, Starkle also has two retail outlets in New Delhi and Mumbai. A strong follower of a minimalistic lifestyle herself, her aim with Starkle is to introduce other young individuals to aesthetically pleasing and non-ostentatious fine jewellery.

Meenu Bhatia

Meenu is the Co-Founder of VMentor.ai, an organization that works with organizations and helps them deliver superior shareholder value and achieve 10X business growth through tech-driven, human-intervened platforms and interventions.

Meenu also leads YUGMA – the campus – corporate engagement initiative under VMentor.ai that works with Business and Graduate schools helping enhance employability and building a pipeline of talent for organizations. Prior to her entrepreneurship journey, Meenu worked with organizations such as Piramal Group, Godrej Group and CHEP India among others in her corporate stint of 16 years and has led several HR Transformation initiatives across India, USA, Europe and South East Asia.

Meenu is a certified Leadership Coach, Accredited by International Coaching Federation and works with CXOs on team performance, building a culture, leadership, leading with empathy and more. She holds a Post Graduate Degree in Human Resources. She is also certified in Design Thinking, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and MBTI which helps her to bring out the innate potential and gifts of her clients and people in educational institutions and organizations.

Neha Juneja

Neha Juneja, along with Ravinder Voomidi Singh and Mohit Gupta started IndiaP2P.com, an organization that offers high-yield investment products composed of curated retail loans. IndiaP2P.com is a new, technology-first investment platform for high-yield fixed-income investments designed for retail investors.

She is a seasoned entrepreneur having previously Co-founded & scaled Greenway – the world’s largest clean cooking enterprise with operations across India and sub-Saharan Africa where she developed multiple credit partnerships with Banks, MFIs and NBFCs focused on women as borrowers. Prior to Greenway, she set up India’s first consumer-facing derivatives trading platform designed for retail investors.

She holds an Industrial Engineer degree from the Delhi College of Engineering and an MBA from the Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi. She is an Echoing Green fellow and has won several entrepreneurship awards such as the Business world Young Entrepreneur Award, L’Oreal – Femina Award for Science and Innovation, Intel Global Award, Ashden Award and more. Through IndiaP2P.com, her vision is to make productive investments offering high returns accessible to everyone in India and to enable wealth generation for investors of all sizes while contributing constructively to the economic growth of the nation.