Page 35 - 10 Futuristic Women Entrepreneurs in India 2022

10 FUTURISTIC WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS IN INDIA

Archna Wadhwa Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD), Sales Lead Gener- HOW ARE YOU SEEING THE WORLD
CHANGE FOR WOMEN AFTER THIS
ation, and Database Management & Governance.
PANDEMIC?
The ambit of our clientele includes Banking,
Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI), Credit The first challenge is restoring the Socioeco-
A PIONEER ENVISIONING AI FOR THE FUTURE OF BUSINESSES WITH ANALYTICS Rating Agencies, Gaming industry, Education and nomic status of women affected by the
pandemic to its pre-pandemic levels. This
SAVES AT WORK (aSaw) Fitness start-ups. will enable accurate accounting of losses
Our latest launch – HIREachy – is an AI-powered by gender accrued due to the pandemic.
Corporate Review | Pooja Kundoo Talent Acquisition and Hiring Support Service On a positive note, though, some post-pan-

which deploys our proprietary document parser demic changes have been beneficial for
unexpected opportunity to pivot from Engnee- (CoLander) for automating resume parsing & profile women. The proliferation of the gig economy in
ring to the Data Analytics industry. screening to fast-track recruitment for our clients. tandem with flexible work-setups for remote jobs
“Data Science in the early 21st century was in its OVERCOMING THE ROADBLOCKS have provided opportunities for part-time work to
women who were earlier incapacitated to find
nascent stage and was yet to find its stature of paid employment due to the rigidity of corpo-
a lucrative consulting domain”, asserts Archna. Entrepreneurship is about fixing mistakes promptly rate shift timings. Corporations nowadays are
as and when they do occur. While learning
She served as Head of Analytics and Chief Data is imperative, unlearning is equally essen- becoming increasingly amenable to the flexible
Officer for HSBC before setting up aSaw. These tial to make yourself flexible and adaptable. work timings of remote jobs which bodes well for an
global roles gave her the confidence to build enhanced inclusion of women in part-time gigs.
social
Another
transformation
has
that
her enterprise while she received unconditional In the initial years, finding traction for our prod- become apparent post the pandemic is the
support from her mentors, peers, friends and family. ucts was challenging. Sometimes entrepreneurial rebalancing of household gender duties,
proclivities can be anti-economical and beware
“Being an entrepreneur is an uphill battle which those moments because the most important thing a welcome reprieve for working women.
will put up its own set of unique challenges, however, is to develop innovative solutions that clients are PLANS AHEAD
if you think that your idea is worth it, then now is willing to pay for and not just something that you like. We’re currently pivoting from being a SaaS-
the time to chase it,” adds Archna while she shares based products enterprise to a full-fledged Busi-
anecdotes about her journey, the brand aSaw Thus, aSaw has been pivoting its business model ness Solutions and AI company offering B2B
and the plans ahead. Archna believes science, and continuously improving its products and service products and services to serve the emerging
creativity, and strategic thinking gives data offerings to suit the emerging needs of Businesses. needs of post-pandemic global businesses.

science its true meaning. She has been successful HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO PROMOTE In the coming months, we’re planning to open
an office in the US while continuing to grow
in harnessing the value of data with her strategic THE TERM WOMEN ENTREPRENE- in Hong Kong and the UK. India will remain
vision, execution, and making the complex, simple. URSHIP SPECIFICALLY? the innovation and development Centre for
“Travel is a significant part of my life, and For many years now, there has been debate, aSaw for the foreseeable future. We’re looking
I usually end up in an Art Gallery or watching to sizably scale up our Business Development
Founder & CEO a play whenever I’m out of town. That’s my dialogue and discussion to promote women resources to push for a 60% YoY revenue growth.

Women entrepreneurs in India have estab- idea of a good life – Travel, Art, and Theatre – entrepreneurship in India, but little progress has WORDS OF WISDOM
lished their presence significantly in the health- while working through it all,” quips Archna. been made so far and sheer optimism and
care, research, technology, FMCG, apparel, political demagoguery can’t drive this agenda. Get the basics right. Risk, when rationalized,
AI, IoT, crypto and aviation industries. What ABOUT aSaw The need of the hour is to have gender SOPs is rewarding but if hyperbolized will annihilate
makes their journey exemplary is the fact that aSaw is a Business Solutions and AI Company in taxation, operations financing, fund-raising, your prospects.
most of them are first-generation entrepreneurs offering SaaS products and services. Our propri- and affirmative action indexed tender contract Normalise your responses to mistakes. Learn quickly
hailing from small-town middle-class families. etary platform leverages cutting edge tech- and move on so that you never get stuck with
From being the ‘first woman Engineer’ in Punjab nologies and methodologies like Computer disbursal to promote women-entrepreneurship. them for long.
State Sugar Federation to successfully running Vision, Cloud & DevOps, Deep Learning, Docu- The discourse on Gender GDP must find a louder Stop asking for advice from everybody. Some-
her venture, Analytics Saves at Work (aSaw), the ment Parsing, Natural Language Processing echo at the World Economic Forum so that the cost times the thing that’ll bring you down is ineffective
journey of Archna Wadhwa as a determined of Gender bias becomes common knowledge. advice. Know who to listen to.
and innovative leader is worthy of all praise. (NLP), Name-Entity Recognition (NER) Extraction Women need to have a seat at the table everywhere Entrepreneurship emblemises courage and will. Let
Archna initiated her managerial journey in the and Sophisticated Search Amplifications. whether it’s in the parliament or a board meeting. that drive of determination claim you. If going gets
BFSI sector with GE Capital after completing her We serve our clients across industries and tough, hang in there till you find a way out. Allow it
MBA from IIT, Kharagpur Vinod Gupta School of support them in Data Science Projects, Busi- I believe the term Women Entrepreneurship must to take you to that pinnacle of passion from where
Management (IITKGP VGSOM). ness Consulting, Building Centre of Excellence, be used as a reinforcer of gross Gender Inequity forth will unravel your very own journey of starting a
She recalls that this granted her an Product Development & Digital Transformation, in Entrepreneurship. venture and becoming an entrepreneur. Good luck.

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