International Women’s Day 2022 | A look at some of the women-led unicorns in India
Every year, March 8 is celebrated as International Women’s Day. This year, the UN given theme is “Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow” aims to recognize women who are working to build a more sustainable future. To celebrate the day honouring the efforts of women in every field of life, let’s take a look at some of the women-led unicorns in India.
Falguni Nayar, Co-founder of Nykaa | Nayar has been the face of female entrepreneurship in India the last few years. She started beauty ecommerce platform Nykaa, seen as India’s Sephora in 2012. Nayar took Nykaa public last year to a valuation of over $10 billion, tripling from months before. (Image: News18 Creative)
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Rajoshi Ghosh, Co-founder of Hasura | The newest entrant to the unicorn club at the moment, Hasura makes web app development faster. It cuts down the time and expertise required to build GraphQL APIs for data access. Ghosh is an alumnus of the National University of Singapore and co-founded 34 Cross, a product development company whose idea sowed the seeds for Hasura. (Image: News18 Creative)
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Smita Deorah, Co-founder and co-CEO of LEAD School | Deorah runs LEAD with her husband Sumeet Mehta and has previously worked with Procter and Gamble. LEAD is a technology platform which schools can use to enhance learning via smart classrooms, certified teachers and international curriculum. She has also founded Sparsh, a non-profit organisation to help children from low-income communities by running schools in rural areas. (Image: News18 Creative)
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Ghazal Alagh, Co-founder of Mamaearth | Ghazal along with her husband Varun, run new-age skincare and bodycare brand Mamaearth. She is known for testing each new Mamaearth product on her before it ships to the public, to check for side effects, etc. (Image: News18 Creative)
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Garima Sawhney, Co-founder of Pristyn care | Pristyn Care, a technology platform which utilises additional capacity in hospitals to create multispeciality clinics and surgery centres. Sawhney herself is a doctor from the Maharashtra University of Health Sciences, and was a consultant with Max Super Speciality Hospital and CK Birla Hospital in Gurugram before starting Pristyn, now funded by investors such as Sequoia and Tiger Global. (Image: News18 Creative)
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Ruchi Kalra, Co-founder of Ofbusiness | Kalra, an alumnus of IIT-Delhi and the Indian School of Business runs the financing business at OfBusiness, a B2B commerce and lending platform. Kalra was a partner at management consulting giant McKinsey before co-founding OfBusiness with husband Asish Mohapatra and others. (Image: News18 Creative)
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Saritha Katikaneni, Co-founder of Zenoti | Katikaneni co-founded Zenoti with Sudheer and Dheeraj Koneru and anand Arvind in 2010. Zenoti is a software platform for spas and salons, primarily in the US but later for other countries too. (Image: News18 Creative)
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Gazal Kalra, Co-founder of Rivigo | Kalra is a co-founder of trucking logistics platform Rivigo, backed by Elevation Capital and Warburg Pincus among others. Kalra worked with McKinsey and was a consultant with the World Bank Group before starting Rivigo. (Image: News18 Creative)
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Divya Gokulnath, Co-founder of Byju’s | Divya Gokulnath is the wife of Byju Raveendran and co-founder of India’s most valuable internet company. As per reports, Divya oversees the content functions at Byju’s and helps curate lectures and teaching styles. (Image: News18 Creative)
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Radhika Ghai, Co-founder of ShopClues | Ghai was one of India’s first ecommerce entrepreneurs, co-founding online shopping portal ShopClues along with husband Sandeep Aggarwal, until things unravelled personally and professionally. She is now founder and CEO of Kindlife, a clean beauty and nutrition online brand. (Image: News18 Creative)
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Ambiga Subramanian, Co-founder and CEO of MuSigma | Data analytics firm MuSigma was one of India’s first unicorns and was funded by top investors such as Sequoia, General Atlantic and Mastercard. Ambiga co-founded the unicorn with her husband Dhiraj. However things changed as the couple split and Ambiga even sold her stake back to her now ex-husband. (Image: News18 Creative)
