Daughters Who Have Broken Through The Shackles Of Patriarchy

Once A Rare Occurrence In Indian Business Families, Daughters Have Broken Through The Shackles Of Patriarchy To Take On Lead Roles In Family Businesses

- Prerna Lidhoo And Smita Tripathi

SCHAUNA CHAUHAN

AGE 46

DESIGNATION

CEO, PARLE AGRO

NADIA CHAUHAN

AGE 36

DESIGNATION

JOINT MD & CMO, PARLE AGRO

KEY ACHIEVEMENTS

MULTI-BRAND CATEGORY EXPANSION, MAKEOVER OF THE COMPANY IN 2016; SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHED NEW PRODUCTS

ALMOST A HUNDRED years ago, when famous weaver Nalli Chinnasami Chetty started a small store from his house in Chennai's T. Nagar to manufacture exquisite silks and pure Kanchipuram sarees, it was unimaginable that a woman would be at the helm of affairs at any point. But that is exactly what has happened at one of India's oldest family-run enterprises that sells more than 2 million sarees annually. For Lavanya Nalli, the 38-year-old Vice Chairman of Nalli Silk Sarees, that had a turnover of ₹570 crore in FY21, things weren't easy when she joined the business in 2005. "Retail was still a dirty word then," says Lavanya Nalli, who was the first woman from her family to join the business. After completing her engineering, she had around three weeks free, which she spent in Nalli's back office.

And she was hooked. "I was fascinated with the retail aspect. So much goes on behind the scenes," she says. "We had all the systems and processes in place but it was all done by people." The first thing she did was start work on automating the processes. Having worked at Nalli for a few years she went to Harvard for her MBA, after which she worked at McKinsey and Myntra before rejoining the family business in 2016. Lavanya Nalli says she had to find her own path within the organisation as things weren't laid out for her. For instance, she set up the e-commerce business from scratch. "In my case there was no pressure to join the family business."