ET Startup Awards 2019: Nominees for the 'Woman Ahead' category

Stars of ET Woman Ahead say believe in yourself and leverage your strengths. Here are the five entrants shortlisted for the 'Woman Ahead' category for the Economic Times Startup Awards 2019. A high-profile jury will pick the winners from eight categories on Friday.

Priya Krishnan

Designation: CEO
Company: Founding Years Learning
Founded: 2011
Based: Bengaluru, India
Investors: Peepul Capital, Kaizen Private Equity
Claim to fame: Krishnan worked in various leadership positions at companies like PwC Consulting and MphasiS, before deciding to move back to India from the UK. She started KLAY, a 150-plus chain of day care centres in emerging urban hubs. The company has tied up with more than 200 businesses.

Ankiti Bose

Others

Designation: CEO
Company: Zilingo
Founded: 2015
Based: Singapore, with offices worldwide, including Bengaluru
Investors: Sequoia Capital, Temasek, Sofina and others
Claim to fame: Bose runs Zilingo, an online fashion and beauty marketplace, which is a platform for small-scale merchants from Southeast Asia. Zilingo is the first startup in Asia founded by a woman to be valued at almost $1 billion.

Arpita Kapoor

Others

Designation: CEO
Company: MechMocha
Founded: 2012
Based: Bengaluru
Investors: Accel Partners, Blume Ventures, Shunwei Capital
Claim to fame: Arpita Kapoor cofounded Mech Mocha which runs Hello Play, a local language mobile gaming platform. She pivoted MechMocha from being a game developer to a regional language social gaming platform, where users meet new friends while video chatting over live multiplayer games.

Ashwini Asokan

Designation: CEO
Company: Mad Street Den
Founded: 2013
Based: Chennai, San Francisco Bay Area
Investors: Falcon Edge Capital, Global Brain, Sequoia Capital
Claim to fame: Asokan bootstrapped her startup in 2013 after she returned from Silicon Valley. The firm, a computer vision and AI startup, creates data from retail merchandise and customer behaviour. She is among a select few women entrepreneurs to lead a deep tech platform in India.

Shivani Poddar and Tanvi Malik

Designation: Co-CEO
Company: FabAlley
Founded: 2012
Based: Noida
Investors: SAIF Partners, India Quotient,
Claim to fame: Poddar and Malik run FabAlley and Indya, apparel brands tailored specifically for the contemporary Indian woman. The company, which focuses on affordable fashion for working women, claims to be one of the first e-commerce companies to have hit profitability, as it builds an omni-channel fashion play across online and offline.

Must Read: ET Startup Awards 2019: Nominees for the 'Social Enterprise' category

WHAT WE LOOK FOR IN A WINNER

Expert Speak: Ritesh Agarwal, Founder, Oyo Hotels & Homes

Every year, some of the smartest minds of India Inc gather to honour and celebrate successful companies. Learning about their vision, journey and how they have time and again innovated — often using technology to solve problems and impact society at large — interests me. For winners, I think the key factors are the nature of the problem that the startup is aiming to solve, ability to scale and impact the maximum number of people, and most importantly, the permanence of the proposed solution, which is a measure of the startup’s effectiveness. I expect potential winners to think big, inject passion in the face of challenges and take every drawback as an opportunity to learn and grow, while never losing sight of the end-goal. Everyone is a winner and that they have been shortlisted is not just a thumping endorsement of their courage and calibre, but also a privilege for small-town dreamers like me.