Nisha S

I strongly believe that gone are the days when women were considered no match for all powerful men in this world. The new generations of women across the world has overcome all negative notions and have proved themselves beyond doubt.

After the initial fear and hurdles I faced; I at times thank that I witnessed failure up, close and personal. As that provided for a learning curve which was so great that instead of giving up, I started to develop a deep sense of passion for motivating and educating myself to reach greater heights in business and income. It became a challenge for me, and I don’t know any other way now. And now today my company is regarded as one of the profitable, fastest growing and benchmark in my industry. I still challenge myself to scale even more every year. My desire to build, create, and learn, surpasses my fear. Every challenge I’m faced with now becomes a greater experience of learning my true power. I learned along the way a few important things that, “don’t give up, don’t take anything personally, and don’t take no for an answer, the people who told me no, were the people who eventually told me yes.”

I started with a few women who were staying in slums and facing extreme financial challenges due to alcoholic husbands or out-of-job partners. I did not take funds to help from friends or NGO’s, but asked for help on training which I got from designers, professionals (and almost 8 MNC’s and large companies CEO’s agreed to support). We also refused to pay commission to agents and perhaps we never spent money to advertise. We refused to overcharge and today; the results are not only evident in the books, but the contentment of being able to sustain more than 280 women and their families directly and thousands indirectly by becoming independent cannot be expressed in words. We not only support women, but we also conduct business-only on environmental friendly products by using organic cotton and vegetable dyes. Ours is a 100% women-run business – be it designing, stitching, sales, accounts – everything is a woman-show!

This is the first step in our very long journey of empowering women and creating sustainable communities. I am a follower of Amrita Pritam’s writing… and as the story goes, “Kulwant Singh once told Amrita Pritam that life of women is so inconsequential that it could be written on the back of revenue stamp and see how she wrote her story so big that not revenue stamp, but stamp papers become short.” I aim to ignite self-confidence in every woman for their self-worth and dignity and that yes financial independence is of utmost importance for them to have respect in families especially who are living below poverty lines. Success goes hand in hand with hardship and challenges, but the key is to not give up.