Eagles fly with eagles: Insights on Strategic foresightedness of Indian Women Entrepreneurs and CEO’s

Do eagles fly with eagles? It is important to set competitive circumstances for studying processes leading to foresight building. It is not only picking the right strategy but the timing too. 

The ability to soar above the apparent confusion and spot the developments that set the trend is all that foresight is about. For Hi-tech firms, where the speed of knowledge and adoption rate capability, and processing capacity matter, it is more of a chess game. But other entrepreneurial firms, especially those with women leaders are not behind in chasing their own game!

Technically speaking, in a world of turbulence as in VUCA, are you analyzing how customers go about discovering what their needs and priorities are? If you know the priority processes you can uncover a lot. This is ‘Transcendental foresight’.

The key question is, who is looking?
How many are looking?
How hard are they looking and what are they looking?

What is the degree of freedom to address the situations? Unlocking complexities, etc. We must also understand that a. The future has not happened yet; b. The future events are dimly indicated; and c. The future is fraught with discontinuities. Have these women entrepreneurs addressed one or a combination of the above?

It seems some of these intertwined complex questions and assumptions have been addressed in the journey traversed by several Indian women entrepreneurs cum CEOs, it is their proverbial eagle-like intent to soar above the clouds of complexities, which we intend to portray through their endeavors.

Women entrepreneurs and as CEOs’

Globally women entrepreneurs are on rise. It is no more a modicum on entrepreneurial skills harnessed by these new age women entrepreneurs, as they are on flight, ‘eagles fly with eagles’. Several, not limited to this shortlisting but indicative and salutation to these women entrepreneurs.

• Aditi Gupta: Founder Menstrupedia
  Aditi has moved up the ladder on a most tabooed subject of discussion, supported by her insights and research on the subject. Originating from a humble background, she along with her husband went on to educate the illiterate girls about the myths of mensuration. Addressing with a comic character, she went off as an educator on health and hygiene, emerging as a respectful and innovative person. Picking up a mundane, tabooed but significant issue, committing to the cause and communicating with the affected people shapes up the future of an entrepreneurial firm.
• Ashwini Asokan: Founder Mad Street Den
  Mad Street Den, a cloud based platform on Artificial Intelligence was an obvious choice by Ashwini and her husband post their exposure with Intel. An area extending neuromorphic engineering, which engages in building computer chips imitating human brains, she along with her husband have introduced this in India. Their organisation based in building a core architecture around Artificial intelligence of the future. As a quick insight, their technology in smartphones is able in identifying facial expressions, emotions and also the reactions. This is likely to open up newer industries. The trickiest part is to keep evolving in a yet unexplored domain of experiential learning.
• Chitra Gurnani Daga: Founder Thrillophilia
  Travelling is not restricted to men, passionate women travellers are on the rise and Chitra is one of them. She along with her husband pursued their innate desire in establishing Thrillophilia. Armed with professional degrees to give them comfortable life style for a life time, they instead went on the unconventional path in following their dreams. Probably their qualitative exposure in high end academics opened their doors for creative thinking and a pursuance for risk taking. Their adventure firm attempts to foster local adventure based experiences spread across widely. A strong intent to tap the dormant human nature of being adventurous explorers and provide that experience is central to any initiative.
• Garima Satija: Founder PoshVine
  PoshVine is a creative outlet by Garima that embraces the concept of community market place for individuals seeking adventure traveling. Armed with professional degrees and embracing the need to do hard work, she excelled in her direction to be what she wanted to be. Her enterprise curates travelling with foodies. Credits on fine dining can be converted into a travel repository that can be redeemed at any point. To provide an opportunity to create a trial-balance between human-need (food) and human-desire (travel) is critical.
• Sairee Chahal: Founder Sheroes.in
  Sairee fondly known by her surname Chahal, a multitasker has been instrumental in establishing Sheroes. This enterprise offers opportunities with resources to women. With her tenacity and astuteness she has emerged as the most known women entrepreneurs addressing the social domain. Sheroes being the women only platform operated by women, is a closed community one in engaging discussions on women related issues. It gives a safe and secured outlet for venting and sharing ideas. What is so strategic, is the closed community opening up new avenues of experience for their customers.
• Shradha Sharma: Founder & CEO YourStory Media Pvt Ltd
  Yourstory and Shradha have become synonym globally. This media platform has been actively engaged in bringing stories on start-ups and their ecosystem. She was able to capture this mindset of young entrepreneurs who had no platform to share about their story and this is what was capitalised by Shradha. The core objective is to pitch the unsaid story behind the start-up, the entrepreneur and the ecosystem it engages into. As a women entrepreneur she has been proactively engaged in bringing shared knowledge across the table. Shared learning is welcome and what can be better than a formal pitching ground in sight. 
• Upasana taku, Co-Founder MobiKwik
  Upasana found some glitches in the payment gateways and this is what triggered her to initiate Zaakpay. This was a response to solve issues in the eCommerce area. On the other side her entrepreneurial venture, MobiKwik attempts to be a mobile wallet used for recharge. Armed with high ended professional degrees, she is considered to be a lead woman entrepreneur in the tech space. Her both initiatives complement each other on web based financial solutions, which are customised and simple. Keep it quick, secure and simple is the mantra in the fintech space of operations.

Redefining Strategic foresight for women entrepreneurs and CEO’s 

At a point of time when an event occurs that brings a significant impact in the environment of operation, operators often lack immediate insight or foresight to comprehend the reason or the future course. But what remains important is how they transcend the event through their action and as has been known that in inclement weather while other birds seek shelter, eagles soar above the clouds towards sunshine.

Translating complexities into understandable, searchable and contextualising them into signals that may or may not impact the future, has been the changing game. Did they sight some soft trends? Did they visualise patterns finding via simplification. How to speed up foresight capability of the firm is their next step? How to get insights about the changing business environment? How to improve the operating speed and How to decode the complexity? These are palpitating questions they are engaged constantly in responding to during their entrepreneurial journey. Eagles fly with eagles! Are you an eagle?

Written by Dr. Manoj Joshi.