It’s hard for women to reenter the workforce. This Wharton grad’s job portal is for them

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In a Starbucks in the heart of Bangalore, I sip a double espresso across from Neha Bagaria. She nods towards the upper floor of the cafe.

“We started, by the way, down the road from here,” she recalls, pointing to a coworking space down the street. The day they launched their site, though, the internet was down. “So we all took our laptops and walked to Starbucks. We were upstairs here.”

JobsforHer works like any other jobs and resources site, with a twist.

She recounts the excitement of the unknown in that moment. Neha and her team – a group of women you could count on one hand – didn’t know exactly what they were doing, but they knew they were excited.

Founded on March 8, 2015 – International Women’s Day – Neha’s portal JobsforHer functions like any other jobs and resources site. With a twist: it’s specifically for women who have taken a break from the workforce – for motherhood, for example – and want to pick up a job again.

See: Sheroes helps Indian women get back into the workforce

Sprung from experience

Neha Bagaria, founder of JobsforHer. Photo Credit: JobsforHer.

Neha had the idea for JobsforHer after her own experience with motherhood. A Wharton graduate in finance, marketing, and information systems, she was running her own educational center in Mumbai. When she got married, she shut shop and moved to Bangalore with her husband, where she oversaw financing and marketing strategy at his pharmaceutical manufacturing firm nearly right up until the birth of her first child.

It was a shame that not everyone had that opportunity.

“I was like, yeah, I’m not going back to work,” she tells Tech in Asia. Three and a half years later, when her second child was half a year old, she found herself wanting to be back in the workforce.

“I need to get back to work to become the person I used to be, the person I know,” she remembers thinking. “I realize that, to be a better mother, I need to be a more happy and fulfilled person.” For her, that meant employment. She took up her old position and loved it – she was putting in hours from home at something she truly enjoyed, and she found that she and her family were happier for it.

It was a shame, she decided, that not everyone had that opportunity.

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Events for Her