Breaking the glass ceiling: How women CAs have become their own bosses

The long work hours in the corporate sector along with the responsibility of taking care of a young child nudged Chennai-based Aishwarya Chandramohan into starting her own practice in 2015. “This helped me design my own timings. It also allowed me to run my own firm and generate employment, something I am proud of. I have a team of people and I have been able to help them grow in their career,” says Chandramohan.

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It was a similar situation for Delhi-based Jyoti Sharma, who runs an independent CA firm where all five partners, including her, are women. And this is by design. After obtaining her CA professional certification in 2012, she landed a job with a well-known foreign bank. However, procedural delays meant that her date of joining got postponed from January 2013 to April that year. “I got the sense that the offer may not fructify. This is when I sought guidance from senior CAs who suggested that I start my own practice,” she says.

She got an opportunity to be a partner at a firm run by a senior CA. However, after his death in 2018, disputes arose in his family, which left Sharma professionally vulnerable. “I continued with my practice but realised it is not easy for a woman to do so in a male-dominated business space. This is when I decided that I will get only female CAs on board and started approaching women who may have quit the profession due to a variety of reasons,” says Sharma.

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But unlike Chandramohan and Sharma, Pune-based Payal Sarda Rathi and Neelam Saboo were clear about their ambition to set up their own respective firms immediately after clearing their CA exams in 2008 and 2014, respectively.

Apart from her professional commitments, Rathi runs Care For You Foundation, which looks after orphaned children. “I decided to opt for my own practice because I wanted to balance my work and my commitments towards the NGO and my family,” she says.

Laying the foundation of their businesses

Venturing out on ones own is never easy but these women CAs adopted strategies to give themselves a head start. For Rathi, the trick was to not refuse any work and not turn away any client, even if small. “We undertook internal audits for smaller firms and even housing cooperative societies, and did filing bulk returns, the kind of work that larger established firms would not take up,” Rathi says.

Chandramohan, whose clientele comprises private limited companies, felt that businesswise, it did not make sense for her to take on individuals as clients. “I started out by helping startups and smaller companies with their due diligence processes as they could not afford larger CA firms. I was like an outsourced CFO (chief financial officer) for them,” she recalls.

She also takes up short-term projects from large audit firms for a retainer (fixed payment depending on the scope of work). This, she says, helps her keep in touch with developments in the corporate sector and alongside, also get opportunities to travel and network.

Tackling gender bias

Asked if she faced any challenges as a woman CA running her own firm, Chandramohan quips, “I had problems as an employee! I wanted to finish work and did not want to hang around late in office as the others did. I felt I was respected better as a self-employed CA. There was no gender bias. Only my work mattered and my clients didn’t care whether I worked from office or home."

According to Raghunathan, gender bias is not a big issue right now (at least as much as it was earlier) as clients have begun appreciating that both men and women have put in the same effort to clear the tough CA exam and that women CAs are equally competent.

But Saboo does say that even today sometimes clients call her up and say, “Sir se baat karni hain” (I want to speak to Sir)" and she has to tell them that it is she who heads the firm! Saboo specialises in direct taxes for individual clients and tax audits for firms.

Sharma echoes the sentiment. “Individual clients in particular were not open to consulting an independent woman CA. So I decided to focus on institutional clients—corporates, government organisations and NGOs. Now, we have over 500 clients across our offices in Nagpur, Indore and Ajmer,” she says. The list now includes a few senior officials who are on the boards of companies. “They are broad-minded. However, in the case of many other individual clients, to date, many do not take women seriously, until and unless they have had experience of working with you,” says Sharma.

Other challenges along the way

As the owner of a small CA firm, Rathi says that it is sometimes tough to attract the best talent and even when you do, the best employees tend to treat their tenure as a training period, only to hop on to bigger firms.

Chandramohan, who has a team of 12-15 people with BCom and MCom degrees working under her, faces staffing challenges too. “I have spent a lot of time training my employees. Many also lack communication skills. This was very frustrating in the beginning but it has paid off in the long run,” she says.

Talking about her initial struggles, Saboo says, “The first two or three years were tough as it is difficult to get clients when you are new. Also, not every meeting with a potential client materialises into something.” Today, she says the challenge is of a different sort. “Many people think why should they pay a CA as they can do the work themselves online,” says Saboo.

What to expect when you run your own show

So what’s the advice that these women offer to others who want to tread the same path?

Saboo says that it is important to have patience in the initial years and not to quit too soon. Highlighting the fact that it can take three to four years to break even, she says that it is imperative they plan their personal finances. “I come from a financially stable background and my husband works for a large multinational bank, so our finances are taken care of,” she points out.

Offering a tip to those who need an assured income, Saboo suggests they work as a consultant with another firm while managing their own business alongside.

Chandramohan talks about how with a corporate job one may have one area of focus but when you venture out on your own, there will be many new things to learn. “In the corporate world, I worked in the area of revenue reporting only. When I started my practice, I had to learn so many things from scratch. For example, I learnt a lot about the Companies Act and also gained exposure to GST. But I enjoyed this a lot.”

She also emphasises on the importance of networking, especially for women.

Finally, while being one’s own boss may appear very appealing, Rathi offers a note of caution. “You have to deal with the pressure of being held solely responsible if something goes wrong. In a job, you may have seniors who will be there to take the responsibility.”