The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : How women are working their way up

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Mar 09, 2009
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

How women are working their way up

Liffy Thomas

CHENNAI: A smile flits across Revathy Sanmugham’s face as she recalls her early days. Married at 15 after she discontinued studies, the daughter of poet Kannadasan has come a long way as an entrepreneur.

“My first income was Rs. 60, which I earned selling 10 plates of venn pongal, some time in 1999 when I started undertaking catering in a small way at home,” says the 52-year-old. Today, Srishti Catering Services talks of a different success story. It accepts three to four outdoor catering orders a week, and many women will vouch that her cooking classes have given them a new identity in their household.

Varadamammal Arumugam, 49, one of the oldest members of the Working Women’s Forum, is happy with her new status. With a loan amount of Rs.7,500, Varadamammal was initially content buying a second-hand pushcart, with which she and her husband make a living selling basic grocery from street to street in south Chennai. But, the Arumugams were not the ones content investing Rs.1,000 a day to make Rs.150 to Rs.200. “I don’t stick on to one business but change according to seasons selling either fruits or vegetables,” she says.

There are many such stories of women who have come out from the cocoons of the house for both personal and financial independence.

According to the Tamil Nadu Small and Tiny Industries Association, there are about 75,000 small and micro enterprises in Chennai alone, involved in a range of businesses, including leather, plastic and electronic engineering.

“For the last two to three years there has been an increase of seven to eight per cent in the number of such units. However, women head three to five per cent of the 75,000 units,” says K. Gopalakrishnan, general secretary, TANSTIA. Thanks are also due to many other organisations working to uplift women’s role in the society. Working Women’s Forum (WWF), a social organisation to “develop the total human resource potential of very poor women workers”, also has many success stories to share. Talking about the changing role of women entrepreneurs, Jaya Arunachalam, WWF founder, says, “Women are doing exceedingly well as entrepreneurs, particularly those who are single, not by choice but by circumstances i.e., a widow or a woman who is deserted.”

Besides independence, confidence is what many of these women wear on their sleeve. “For an entrepreneur it is a tough time to expand or get the funds but they are certainly moving from best practice to next practice,” says Gayathri Sriram, chairperson, CII Chennai Zone.

There are also others like Saloni Malhotra, founder of DesiCrew, who not just nurtured her entrepreneurial passion by seeing potential in rural India but also promises to be a ray of hope for many rural women to set up their own knowledge-based unit in the long run.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Tamil Nadu