Era of the Woman Enterpriser

Gone are the days when entrepreneurship was automatically about hard- charging ambitious men chasing new frontiers. Today, women have acquired a habit of chasing frontiers that looked impossible just a few decades ago. Talk startup, and there is just no way you can ignore women of substance, drive, passion and success. Talk barriers, and you will find women surmounting them at ease. The 21st century may belong to India, but it most certainly does belong to women entrepreneurs from India. BW Businessworld profiles four women who have proven just that.

- Sujata Sangwan

NAIYYA SAGGI

Co-founder & CEO, BabyChakra

MUMBAI-BASED BABYCHAKRA is a social discovery platform for everything about pregnancy and child care in India. It is like a modern parent’s child care buddy. The company was launched in 2014. BabyChakra .com is one of the largest communities of parents and experts in India, which allow parents to make better and informed choices about child care products and services.

When asked about problems, BabyChakra was addressing, Naiyya Saggi said, “We are building BabyChakra for a couple of reasons – firstly, because young couples are essentially raising children in nuclear families, with no support system to fall back on. Secondly, they are also active consumers of the internet for choices of houses, travel, restaurants for example. But for something as critical as child care, no platform exists to help you make the right decision. Thirdly, the volume of non-validated information is on a rise and more and more parents are finding themselves at horns in dilemma, while making decisions. With a mission to solve this problem, we have built BabyChakra, first of its kind, a truly global platform.”

In the next five years, BabyChakra wants to be able to cover many Indian cities and touch lives of many young, Indian mothers.It also hopes to set a global precedence for its newly launched social commerce, in a way that it becomes a mother’s natural first choice. Commenting on the market size and opportunities, Naiyya added, “The market size is $24 billion, with products and services. The market is highly fragmented and 90 percent of it is today offline. BabyChakra has very quickly grown to be the largest platform for mothers to connect with brands and services in this space.”