• Women Entrepreneur

There’s no way you’ll believe that these women were ever “just homemakers.” But that’s exactly what this bunch of six women say they were—taking care of home and hearth, yet wanting more. After all, for married women belonging to the upper-middle class, money is not the biggest concern. Well-educated and provided for, the family also doesn’t encourage them to take up jobs as a hobby either.

Thus, for these women, who would switch on the TV only to follow soaps and movies and flip lifestyle magazines, to reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad and The War of Wealth, it has been more than just a change in the psyche.

“We now call ourselves homemakers with a difference,” laughs the vivacious Jyoti Wadhwa. A psychology graduate, Wadhwa refuses to divulge her age and, like a clever investor, is also cagey about disclosing her investment options. All she’ll reveal is that she not only takes care of her own investments but manages the entire family’s portfolio, too.

It wasn’t always like this. Married into a business family in Kolkata, she was soon caught in family life—until a friend told her about Millennium Mams. She was a part of the third batch of Millennium Mams, and now that her children are grown-up and settled, she devotes nearly five hours everyday to her work. From scanning macro news in financial dailies to tracking the market on channels and the Internet, Wadhwa is cued in for most of the day. “I get into sectors such as FMCG, banking, cement and sugar, which I know about and understand from what I see in daily life,” she says, adding that her Saturday revision classes with Millennium Mams keep her going. “I feel so young, probably because we still address ourselves as girls!” laughs
the lady.

An 18-year-old initiative started by Kolkata-based industrialist B. K. Dhanuka, Millennium Mams is a non-profit organization that imparts financial education to women. It now has chapters in Mumbai and Bengaluru as well. Wadhwa claims it changed her life forever. “I not only learned about the financial world, but I’m now a pro at understanding company balance sheets,” says Wadhwa.

She is not alone. The motley group of six women gathered at The Bengal Rowing Club represents just a few women who have found their life’s calling—being businesswomen and savvy investors—and all of them give the credit to Dhanuka and his organization.

Started with the aim of giving women financial education and know-how about capital markets, Millennium Mams has, in turn, made women more aware of how money makes the world go round. “Women’s emancipation has no meaning if they aren’t financially independent,” says Dhanuka. And gradually, once these women enroll themselves for a two-year course with Millennium Mams, they not only understand terms such as market share and inflation but also learn to handle money by investing in markets.

Says Shruti Goenka: “Married at 19, I was an extremely shy girl.” Not anymore. Today, Goenka, in collaboration with another friend, runs Nouveau, a hugely successful high-fashion exhibition and sales bazaar across the cities of Bengaluru, Delhi, Dubai, Kolkata, Mumbai and Hyderabad. “From being tongue-tied in front of people whom I didn’t know, to cutting smart deals, I have come a long way—and I only have Millennium Mams to thank,” says Goenka.

For others such as Ritika Kumar, it inspires them to become businesswomen in their own right. Married at an early age, Kumar found herself in a different city, without friends and a social life. But things changed once she enrolled for the course in 1995. After learning how to dabble in shares, Kumar became confident enough to start the city’s first standalone gym and spa called Add Life on Camac Street. She won’t tell how much she sold it for in 2008, and has now started Fresco, a company that offers high-end fine china and porcelain for the city’s clientele. “I learned how not to be sentimental about investments and stocks from Dhanuka and moved on once similar spas and gyms came up in the city.”

For Shradha Saraf, the classes came as a push in the right direction. A graphic designer, Saraf got married when she was 25. “When I had my daughter, I was at home, but soon felt like I was stuck in a limbo and wanted a change,” she says. Millennium Mams gave her yet another perspective to her work—finance. Saraf now has her own fashion label called K-Sara and has been organizing Cherry Orchard, an annual exhibition-cum-shopping event, in the city since 2008. She is now working on building her fashion label.

A former teacher, Aditi Chirimar, gave it all up when her sons were born. But that didn’t mean just sitting at home since she joined Dhanuka’s classes and pushed herself to understand the stock market—something that she initially found too stressful. The first one to grab a financial daily every morning, Chirimar has now put her knowledge to good use by helping her husband out in his tea and organic farming business. She considers marketing her forte and travels with her husband for client meetings and negotiations. “It’s a great feeling to know that my husband can rely on me to handle an aspect of business if he’s busy,” she reveals proudly. Tea tasting, though, is something she hasn’t yet learned to like.

But few people are immune to the tantalizing smell of fries and onion rings at standalone McCann’s outlets in Kolkata’s malls. The brainchild of 48-year-old Sangita Mehta, these outlets have met with such success that the company is replicating the model in other parts of the country, too. An institutional supplier of packaged foods in West Bengal, Mehta has taken her husband’s food division business from Rs.30 lakh to Rs.2.5 crore in a decade. A keen investor, Mehta re-jigged her entire family’s investment portfolio a few years ago. “From being someone who picked up a newspaper only to skim through the gossip columns to predicting a company’s quarterly results, it has been a long fruitful journey,” says Mehta. Dhanuka cajoles women like Mehta to pick up shares of a company they like, only so that they follow the market keenly. She laughs about how it was merely her dancing skills that had mesmerized her husband and his family before marriage.

Broadly speaking, it’s not just about how a body such as Millennium Mams has helped women find their financial groove. Dhanuka himself admits that it is all about a push and shove in the right direction. “I maintain that women make the best investors. The only thing that stands in their way is financial illiteracy,” he says. And once a woman gets a handle of money matters, it changes her entire personality. Dhanuka also suggests that there is no time as good to start as the present. “If you keep waiting for your children to grow up, you are only procrastinating,” he warns. The best part about being an investor is that you can follow your money even when you are in the kitchen. Time to take money matters off the backburner?

These savvy investors swear by:
1. Land
2. Gold—bullion and bars
3. Silver
4. Fashion industry
5. Food sector
6. Education sector

The fine print:
1. Never be sentimental about stocks.
2. Do your homework, find out about the company as much as you can, read its balance sheet, then invest.
3. Go for long-term investments.
4. If something doesn’t feel right with a company’s stocks, book your profits/losses and get out.

Next: More on Millennium Mams ->>>

Tags:
Add Life, Aditi Chirimar, B. K. Dhanuka, businesswomen, Cherry Orchard, fashion, fine china, Fresco, gym, investors, Jyoti Wadhwa, K-Sara, McCann’s, Millennium Mams, Nouveau, Organic farming, porcelain, Ritika Kumar, Sangita Mehta, Shradha Saraf, Shruti Goenka, spa, tea