Nowadays In India, we all see a boost in the digitization of almost every service, Fintech is the sector that is used by most people and it’s a booming industry in India. But historically it was seen that this industry is more of a male dominating industry. But breaking that stereotype now women entrepreneurs are also foraying and contributing to this sector as well. Their journey as women entrepreneurs inspires other women that despite hurdles and difficulties, one must not lose their faith and ensure that no stones are unturned in achieving their goals.
Sonam Srivastava, Founder at Wright Research, an Artificial Intelligence-powered Robo Advisor
Entrepreneurship is one of the boldest and most rewarding journeys that a woman can embark on to fulfill her goals of equal opportunity, independence, and ambition. Sonam Srivastava founded Wright Research in 2019. It’s a SEBI-registered investment advisory firm that uses Deep-Tech, AI & ML modules to invest using Quant research.
Smashing stereotypes, Sonam Srivastava is a globally recognized researcher in the field of machine learning in finance & quantitative investing. Her role as a female entrepreneur has been the most engaging and fulfilling in her career. As an entrepreneur, she makes business decisions true to her vision that has worked well in the big bad world, and there is nothing more fulfilling than that for an ambitious woman. There are always bigger and better challenges around the corner, inspiring a drive to improve and grow.
In the initial part of her journey, she was met with a lot of skepticism, which was very fulfilling to get over. She has seen many achievements in her journeys as well. She has become a somewhat recognized face in the male-dominated investing and trading community. She is often introduced as the first female member to participate in various industry events, which is thrilling. She has built a strong team that efficiently manages more than 100 crores and is greatly appreciated by her clients. Not just that, they can not wait to do more and grow bigger and better and are building relationships to achieve the same. Her firm has recently raised an undisclosed amount of pre-seed funds from BSE Institute Limited, Ryerson Technology startup Incubation Foundation (BRTSIF), Govt. of India, Nidhi SSS. It has also been awarded by NASSCOM under the top 50 AI Gamechanger startups.
She aims to give back the support she has received from the BRTSIF incubator to the next female leaders, supporting them and enabling them in their journeys.
Archana Elapavuluri, Co-founder at Pickright Technologies, a Wealth Tech Startup
Archana Elapavuluri founded Wealth Tech startup”Pickright” Technologies in 2019. This is a SEBI registered Investment Advisory firm that uses Deep Tech, AI & ML modules to build smart portfolios in an autopilot mode irrespective of the size of the investment via its application and website. Like every other working professional and also being a woman, Archana E. (founder) wanted to invest her money right from the day she started earning, there were hardly any platforms that provide and it was always difficult to choose what is the right type of investment. Even today the scenario is the same for the majority of the population on which asset class they should invest based on their risk profiling. The only way available is to easy friends and family and that never results in good returns. Checking with professionals is intimidating as the investable amount is of small size. Further to this, she thinks of building a platform that is effortless, easy, and efficient in managing money and helping people to invest smart and wise in curated portfolios.
She has many accomplishments to her credit. She successfully carved out two revenue-generating lines in ShopX which steered the company towards generating 100 Cr GMV in just six months. Also, at Oracle and ShopX, she created strategies for new initiatives and tied them to growth. She has remarkable expertise in building products from scratch and understands user journeys. Archana also has rich expertise in product, technology, and user lifecycles. She has been a founder of a B2C startup as well.
Upasana Taku, Founder at Mobikwik
Upasana founded Mobikwik in 2009, a company that specializes in digital payments. They joined the market at a time when people were hesitant to use technology to make payments. It was clearly an uphill battle to get customers to register on Mobikwik and take advantage of the benefits of digital transactions.
Despite having a good existence with her corporate work in 2008, she felt she no longer wanted to be a corporate drone. Despite working on some high-impact projects and amassing millions of dollars, she claimed that the job had become too simple. She, on the other hand, desired to return to India and contribute to the Indian startup scene. Taku’s career has come to a halt at this time!
By 2009, she was back in India. She met a lot of individuals on the subcontinent and gathered information on the hottest industries and unmet needs in the business and startup ecosystem. She believes, a wallet like PayPal was not that popular in India. Hence, users in India could never imagine a cashless world. Well, the example of India gave the idea to resolve this gap and work for the advancement of technology in the country.
Swati Bhargava, CEO & Co-Founder at Cashkaro
Swati is the CEO and Co-Founder of Cashkaro.com, the fastest-growing cashback portal in India. Swati and her husband Rohan Bhargava founded Pouring Pounds in the United Kingdom in 2011. They founded Cashkaro.com in April 2013 after seeing a significant opportunity in India.
She quit Goldman Sachs in 2010 to launch her own business after working closely with senior management.
Swati did something that, in most cases, no one would dare to do. She left Goldman Sachs to create her own company. She was well aware that she was taking a significant risk. But she lived by a mantra: do your best and leave the rest. In 2011, she began pouring Pounds in the United Kingdom. It was a business-to-business payback operation. Swati was self-assured and steadfast in her desire to be customer-focused. Their concept was well-received in the United Kingdom. Now, It is the best time to apply the same principles to India. Swati understood that people always desire to preserve a portion of their spending, and this is especially true in India. The concept of payback was novel at the time, and the duo took advantage of it.
Smriti Tomar, Founder & CEO At InvestoAsia
Smriti is an entrepreneur, product engineer, fin-tech developer, and blockchain enthusiast who is passionate about her work. She is the founder and CEO of “InvestoAsia,” and she is working with her team to transform the way people invest in various asset classes. InvestoAsia was founded in 2019.
Since she was a teenager, she had been an active investor. She follows Warren Buffet’s investing philosophies and believes in value investing. Traditional approaches, she realized, that traditional methods are not scalable enough to provide financial inclusion and awareness, so she founded InvestoAsia.
Entrepreneurship is her natural calling; it allows her to dream and achieve goals. It has its ups and downs, but the level of excitement and vitality it generates is a prize in and of itself in the startup journey. She wishes to continue learning and growing each day in order to one day be able to repay society. Well, she always encourages ladies to dream big. She wants to see more and more ladies break free from their limitations and dream big! Apart from that, she would advise staying focused on the value that your product provides to the user/society rather than expanding beyond this circle of revenues, earnings, valuation, and investments.