Issue 4 - Volume 3 | March 2017

She’s a traveling teacher who teaches Entrepreneurship in several Ivy League business schools around the world.
After 20 years in the corporate sector, working in MNC’s on all inhabited continents, she returned to India in 2005 and began teaching entrepreneurship. But she realized that the only way she could bring real time experience to her classroom was if she became an entrepreneur herself. She founded her company, CARMa(Creating Access to Resources & Markets). As on date, CARMa has mentored over 2000 entrepreneurs.
CARMa has also been involved in mentoring women to scale from livelihood enterprises to opportunity based and profitable organizations in Afghanistan, South and East Africa and India. Till date over 10,000 women have been mentored to build scalable and profitable enterprises.
She is a prolific writer for mainstream newspapers, portals and blogs.
She is also a TED speaker.
She was named Business Woman of the year by Business Goa in 2014.
Her first book Entrepedia: a step by step guide to becoming an entrepreneur in India is a best-seller since its launch in 2011. Its second edition, updated and contemporized, was published in mid-2015 and has become the bible of the startup community.
Her second book, Start up, Stand up, published in late 2016, is on its way to becoming a best-seller.
She loves cooking and entertaining people. She is also a trained Carnatic classical singer.
She travels across the globe for teaching, mentoring, speaking, trekking and climbing.

1. How did the idea of starting your own company strike & how did you bring it into implementation?
I returned to India in 2005 for a family reason. My father had Parkinson's and I was told that he was terminal. So I came home to Bangalore to be with him. I had quit my job in the US and come home thinking I would hang around for may be six months or so. Someone from IIM approached me at that time asking if I would be open to teaching whilst I was in Bangalore. I said yes and opted to teach Entrepreneurship. By the end of my first class, I pretty much realized that you can't teach Entrepreneurship like a Management subject. I wanted a first-hand feel, a realtimeness for what I was teaching and so I decided that the best way to bring that to my classroom was by mentoring entrepreneurs. Over the next five years I mentored over 500 entrepreneurs absolutely free and in 2010, I founded CARMa (Creating Access to Resources and Markets, www.carmaconnect.in) with the lofty ambition of changing the karma of entrepreneurs in India.

At that time, there was no animal called mentor in the Indian ecosystem. Anyone who gave advice was called a mentor! I do believe that CARMa has played a significant role in making mentor not just good-to-have for the entrepreneur but an absolute must-have because having a mentor is excellent risk-mitigation strategy. I have discussed these things in detail in both my books, Entrepedia and Start up, Stand up. 
2. Can you take us through the journey of CARMa right from its beginning to the point where it unwaveringly stands today?
 Till date we have mentored over 2000 entrepreneurs in CARMa. We are domain agnostic and phase agnostic. Over time, we have developed a proprietary process of mentoring which is online, outcome focused and transparent. We have mentored entrepreneurs in over 300 domains and if i were to do a quick check, probably 40% are startups (come to us with only a concept in their head and we get them market ready and take them to market), 50% are mature enterprise (anywhere between 5 to 15 years in the market) and 10% family businesses. 
The journey has been exhilarating because my own learning curve has steadily been climbing north! In which other business would I have had the opportunity to learn about 300 domains in one lifetime?

 

3. What has made you so successful as an entrepreneur?

 I think it is my attitude that has made not only CARMa successful but also all our mentees. When I started mentoring, I did not say, I have spent 20 years in the corporate sector, working in MNC's, I know everything, so come to me. I said to every mentee, I know a little, you know a little, together we will learn a lot more! 
We also decided to charge mentoring fees when we started CARMa because by then people in India had begun to see value in our mentoring. Many mentors at that time used to take equity stake in the mentee's company. I did not like that model, so I decided to charge a small, one time, upfront fee. No retainer, no equity and that helped in making the whole mentoring process rigorous and transparent.
4. How difficult is it for a woman to start a company?
 In India, there is never a right time for a woman to be an entrepreneur. But for me there was no such dilemma as I was in my late forties when I became an entrepreneur. I have worked for 20 years as a senior corporate professional in predominantly male dominated industries and I have never felt thwarted on account of my gender. May be because I don't let anyone focus on my gender. I'm a professional first and then incidentally a woman as far as business is concerned!

5. How is entrepreneurship and working women important for India as a whole?

 Extremely important as the new Benetton ad says, we are united by half!
6. Keeping in mind the social and cultural bondages which generally trim down the freedom, confidence and boldness of women, what steps/programs/policies you would like to suggest for the ladies who want to be successful like you?
 You take your career seriously first, then others will take it seriously too.

 

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