5 startup tips for mompreneurs from Sheroes founder

Photo credit: Gabriela Pinto

I am in a flight from Delhi to Bangalore, and sitting right beside me is Sheroes founder and CEO Sairee Chahal. Her startup has placed about 40,000 women in various jobs and helped rediscover careers for over a million Indian women, mostly in the country’s tier-two towns.

We start talking about women entrepreneurs and how most of India’s woman population lags behind in entrepreneurship due to the social structure.

Sairee enumerates inspiring examples of how Anisha Singh, CEO of Mydala and mother of two young kids, is managing a successful ecommerce startup. She also recounts the example of fashion etailer LimeRoad’s CEO Suchi Mukherjee, who has raised about US$50 million for her startup. She is also raising two young kids.

Sairee shares five important points mom CEOs should ingrain to raise a startup and family together. At 35,000 feet, she chalks out the points to help India’s budding mompreneurs:

1. Start small

Sairee started her first company SAITA Consulting nine years ago, when Vera (her daughter) was just born. She took her laptop into the hospital room and was working just a day after she delivered the baby.

In this day and age of the internet, you can be connected to your clients and customers from anywhere. A business can be started with just two employees. “Starting small will give you the flexibility to work on your idea as well as flexibility with your time when raising kids, as well as startup. Even moonlighting is not a bad idea,” she says.

2. Learn to say ‘No’ often

Being a mom and an entrepreneur will mean you have to say ‘No’ to a lot of things, which include party invites, close friends, and relatives. The entrepreneurship journey demands a lot from you – thus weddings, birthdays, and even funerals may take a backseat.

“I am perceived as anti-social in my large and extended family in Delhi. I say “no” to almost all the family functions. A typical north Indian wedding has five ceremonies spread across different days of the week, and If I start attending even one wedding, my business will go haywire,” she adds. “After work hours, I can only find time for my family.”

3. Learn to prioritize

Sairee says she often takes calls from her daughter, even when on stage for a talk show, or in the midst of a client meeting. “Good clients understand that family is priority, and a focal point around which a business is built. If they can’t understand, we ourselves say no to such clients.”

Asking workers to shut lights off by evening and spend time with family is a good idea to build a happy company culture.

It’s said that a human being can focus only on three things at a time. “For me, that is family, work, and health,” she says. The order of priority for a mompreneur can keep changing as the day passes by.

“But for me and my husband, our daughter is the customer, and we make sure, at least one of us is there for her,” she says. Thus both parents travelling for business at the same time is a strict no-no. “We share our Google travel calendars well in advance,” she adds.

4. Install processes at office and home

Pepsico chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi in this video explains how she has instructed her staff to design a questionnaire on what to ask her daughter Tara when she calls Pepsi headquarters to speak to ‘Mommy’.

5. Build the startup’s culture around family