The Hindu : Front Page : Women entrepreneurs do well in Erode

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Monday, Sep 17, 2007
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Women entrepreneurs do well in Erode

Karthik Madhavan

ERODE: In this business town, it is a misnomer to say that behind every successful man is a woman. The reason is that women are no longer behind, and when it comes to success they are as good as men, if not better.

Be it selling vegetables at Uzhavar Sandhai’s, milk retailing, running grocery stores, managing looms or other industries, women are undoubtedly in the forefront.

Take for example, the most well-known face of women entrepreneurship from Erode: Santhi Duraisamy of Sakthi Masala.

Ms. Santhi runs the day-to-day affairs of the company, as she has been doing for the past 31 years. She is of course the popular face but not the only one. There are hundreds of such successful women who are in the process of becoming Santhis.

Culture

But what is that makes the women from Kongu region take to business and run it successfully at that? The first answer one gets is that the tendency is in the culture. “Right from the pre-industrialised days when agriculture was the only occupation, women earned money by selling milk, greens and vegetables from their farms, made money, which they maintained in a separate thrift account, called ‘Siruvadu’,” says K. Tamilarasan, faculty, Kongu Engineering College.

He adds: “With the ‘Siruvadu’, the women managed affairs efficiently, lent it to multiply and also contributed in case of domestic emergencies.”

Even today in Erode villages, women manage the day-to-day affairs in farms. The present day entrepreneurship stems from that ‘Siruvadu’ trait, say students who are members of the Women Development Cell of the College.

“The entrepreneurial tendency was present right from the agrarian days but is more manifest in the present industrial climate,” say V. D. Mythily, K. K. Hariny and S. Amutha. Women entrepreneurs, however, attribute their success to education, freedom and hard work.

“Kongu women consider it demeaning to remain idle at homes. They either support the family in business or run their own business, which is often the case, and prefer to employ people than get employed,” says Ms. Santhi.

Vidhya Chendil, who is in the process of setting up a non-conventional power plant near Erode, attributes it to education. Yet another pointer to women from the region wanting to do business is the turnout of women in a recent PMRY meeting in Erode.

Of the 124 applications that were received from entrepreneurs-to-be, 48 were women. Given women’s desire to run enterprises, it will be safe in Erode to say behind every successful business there is a woman.

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