Advertisement

Pandemic Is An Opportunity For Those Who Already Embraced Digitalization: Camile Bossel, Co-founder And COO, FoodHack.ch

The session ‘Rise of SheEconomy’ hosted eminent women entrepreneurs from various start-ups on 24th July 2020.

Stirring Minds organized an online entrepreneur summit from 24th-26th July 2020. The event hosted the eminent entrepreneurs from prestigious companies who presented their views about strategies, funding, branding and setting up dream business. 

The session ‘Rise of SheEconomy’ hosted eminent women entrepreneurs from various start-ups on 24th July 2020. Surbhi Dewra, CEO, Careerguide.com; Isabelle Ringnes, Co-founder, Equality Check; Mabel Chacko, Co-founder and COO, Open Financial Technologies; Camille Bossel, C0-founder and COO, FoodHack.ch, Tanul Mishra, CEO, Afthonia; Guneeta Singh, Founder, 1947 Partition Archive and Monika Misra, Founder and General Manager, Ikeva shared their journey to their startups, their views on women entrepreneurship, the impact of COVID-19 on business and what can be done or what is being done to survive and revive the economy. The session was moderated by Dr Anurag Batra, Chairman and Editor- in- Chief of BW Businessworld and Exchange4Media and Vineet Malhotra. 

Discussing the COVID time to be a treacherous path or an opportunity, Tanul viewed that we rely a lot on human capital especially on the manufacturing sector which is being affected or disrupted due to migration of labourers. There will be stages of recovery like in grief, first the shock, then acceptance, a small amount of recovery and finally resurgence. 

On being asked about whether the work from home is double-edged for real estate sector, Monika elucidated that people are forced to tests, companies need to give infrastructure to make a person productive for 9-10 hours, “people cannot constantly be sitting and working, real estate is not going to vanish, people’s need for office space is not going to vanish,” said Monika. 

Speaking about the impact of COVID-19, Mabel presented her view that it brought a huge segment of entrepreneurs or businesses to be digital-ready today which would otherwise be moving to digital after 2-3 years. “It has pushed our mindset 5 years ahead, we’ve grown,” said Surbhi Dewra.  

Viewing about the challenges, Isabelle stated, “It was a very tough period for us as businesses we collaborated with were going offline, they were occupied with saving the business, we had to think how we’ll make ourselves relevant to them during this period”. Her firm launched a survey, specific around corona to see how discrimination and culture is experienced by an employee during corona pandemic and then the insights were provided to different organisations. 

Talking about her personal challenges, Guneeta told, “having grown up in US, then trying to go to India and understand that space or work in that space was a biggest challenge”. Viewing about women entrepreneurship today, Mabel clarified that there is a huge surge of women entrepreneurs, not just startups but many micro-entrepreneurs as well are coming out. 

“Start-ups in India when in a growth stage, it’s been easy to get some amount of fund raising, but a lot of them have to look back at finances, it’s now for the players like us and incubators how we see and manage that, as an incubator, we’re looking at some of these start-ups to bring them on board to see what we can do to help them survive,” Tanul told on being asked about the fear that new start-ups may fold deep by August or September. 

“There hasn’t been a concentrated effort in sort of rescuing startup sector but it has a very tiny fraction of GDP of state, fintech and digital transformation will happen through public and private partnership”, Tanul on economic stimulus package by govt. 

Surbhi and Camille advised emerging young age women entrepreneurs to be independent, inculcate confidence and resilience, go out, seek help and extend a network. Also, be surrounded with the right people, people who have expertise in the field they want to get into. It’s better to uplift and mentor the upcoming young people. 

“In 6 months, one of our targets is to achieve 1000 families for their oral history, we’re on track to achieve this, I’d bring this history in a film for public education,” Guneeta on her next 6-month target.  

“I want to take career guide to a level that I can take another 6 months break because COVID has put a lot of work on me,” said Surbhi. “I want to open newer markets in south-east Asia, ensure tech start-ups as part of our programme and board more women entrepreneurs in fintech and tech space,” Tanul concluded.  



Around The World

Advertisement