Meet 5 Indian women entrepreneurs who are changing the B2B startup ecosystem

An increasing number of women entrepreneurs are emerging in almost all sectors of the economy. Traditionally dominated by men, B2B businesses is one such sector where women are increasingly taking part.

A February 2020 report by Google and Bain & Company revealed that women entrepreneurship can help advance the cause of financial inclusion of women in India. The report says that 13.5-15.7 million women-owned enterprises make up 20 percent of all enterprises in the country – a 6 percent rise from the last decade.

HerStory lists five Indian women entrepreneurs who are changing the B2B landscape.

Upasana Taku, MobiKwik

Upasana Taku is Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of MobiKwik. India’s largest digital credit and payments platform, MobiKwik boasts of 120 million users, three million merchants, and over 300 billers. Her current role is to lead the company from a mobile wallet into a full-stack fintech platform that caters to the financial needs and aspirations of a billion Indians. 

Upasana is the only woman in India to lead a fintech and payments platform of scale. In 2018, she was recognised by the President of India as the first woman in India to lead a ‘payments startup’. She is one of the four Indians featured in the prestigious Forbes 2019 Asia’s Power Businesswomen list. She is also on the global list of ‘Top 100 Women in Fintech 2018’, announced by Lattice80, a London based Global Fintech Hub.

Her resume also boasts of working with PayPal in Silicon Valley and HSBC in San Diego before her return to India to start MobiKwik.

Founded in 2009 by Bipin Preet Singh and Upasana Taku, MobiKwik has raised over $100 million in funding from marquee investors like Sequoia Capital, American Express, Bajaj Finance, and Net1.

---

---

Ankiti Bose, Zilingo

At the age of 23, Ankiti Bose co-founded Zilingo with Dhruv Kapoor (Co-founder and CTO) in 2015, with the vision to bridge the gaps within the fashion industry and help small merchants and traders compete and grow globally. Under her leadership, Zilingo has raised $308 million from investors including Temasek, Sequoia Capital, and Singapore investment fund EDBI. 

Headquartered in Singapore, the startup has a technology centre in Bengaluru. With offices in eight countries and over 600 employees, Ankiti has set out to level the playing field in the global supply chain and empower businesses with tools and software which allow them to scale their business efficiently. 

She launched SheWorkz, an initiative to finance and skill/re-skill women factory workers and empower them to be financially independent by enabling them to work at their own time and from the comfort of their homes. SheWorkz has been launched in Indonesia and Thailand. 

Having been featured on the Forbes Asia 30 Under 30, Fortune 40 Under 40, and Bloomberg 50 lists in the last couple of years, Ankiti also acts as a mentor on Surge, an initiative by Sequoia Capital India designed to supercharge early-stage startups. 

In more recent times, Bose responded to the widespread shortage of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) during the COVID-19 pandemic by repurposing and expanding Zilingo’s network of buyers and sellers to procure and supply PPE to hospitals and governments worldwide.

Adapting to change the consumer demand during mass lockdowns, Ankiti spearheaded the company to expand its B2B offerings to health, food, household, and other essential items on its business solutions platform, Zilingo Trade.

---

---

Smiti Bhatt Deorah, Advantage Club

Smiti Bhatt Deorah is a young and enthusiastic entrepreneur who co-founded Advantage Club with Sourabh Deorah. Post her Master’s from the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), she joined Microsoft in the US. She has strong experience in B2B relationship building and account management.

While working at Microsoft, she felt valued and rewarded by the employee perks and benefits, she received. With that in mind, Sourabh and Smiti saw employee benefits as a space to create disruption using data mining and analytics. Their initial research revealed that no such programmes had been introduced in India yet, and they seized the opportunity to come back to India and launch Advantage Club.

Launched in 2016, Advantage Club runs a corporate discount platform and an end-to-end reward and recognition solution. When corporates enrol with Advantage Club, they get access to exclusive offers from 10,000+ brands, including Samsung, Faasos, PNB Housing, Myntra, and Apollo Pharmacy, among others. 

Founded by UCLA, Microsoft and Amazon alumni Sourabh Deorah, CEO and Co-founder, and Smiti Bhatt Deorah, COO and Co-founder, the core idea behind the company is to help organisations in elevating employee satisfaction and reducing attrition by executing effective benefits and rewards. With 250+ corporate clients including giants like Concentrix, EY, DXC, and Mphasis, Advantage Club is leading the $2 billion market in India and is profitable. 

---

---

Roma Priya, Burgeon Law

With her grandfather, uncles and cousins practising law, the world of law and justice came naturally to Roma. She pursued a degree in International Business Laws and Corporate Laws at Symbiosis International University.

Closely working with entrepreneurs, Roma too was hit by the entrepreneurial bug and decided to venture out on her own.

Coming with an experience of 13 years in corporate law, Roma Priya started Burgeon Law in 2015. The firm has facilitated 500+ deals so far and has successfully represented leading Indian and international clients from multiple jurisdictions such as Singapore, the US, the UK, Mauritius, China, and Japan.

Roma advises and mentors early-stage and high-growth startups, incubators, accelerators, angel investors, family offices, and venture capital/private equity funds. With her distinctive viewpoint and strong market understanding, she has guided businesses on complex legal issues ranging from formation to exit.

Some of the top clients successfully served by Burgeon Law are INDwealth, AngelList, VH Capital, Bulbul, GrowX, Innerchef, Money 91, Akiva, GSF Accelerator, Mamaearth, BiryaniByKilo, Suman Munjal Family Office, and Niki.ai. The firm has worked with many more clients across diverse sectors including fintech, healthcare, data intelligence, logistics, education, ecommerce, travel, FMCG, food and beverage, hospitality, media, etc. 

---

---

Puja Srivastava, Spocto

An alumnus of Birla Institute of Technology, Puja Srivastava did her Master’s in Education from Endicott College, US.

Puja’s journey in the technology industry began from creating systems to support over $2 billion annual procurements, to M&A processes, and setting up processes for educators of the first 100 percent Apple school in the country.  

Puja has over 20 years of experience in the technology segment and has honed her skills to hear the problem, solve it through actionable technology, and implement a scalable solution.

In December 2016, Puja, with her husband Sumeet Srivastava who is also an alumnus of Birla Institute of Technology, started Spocto. The startup provides meaningful insights on consumers and customer data, enabling clients to enhance productivity and increase profitability.

Prior to starting up, she was the Project Manager at GEMAC. Her last stint involved being the Tech Director at Oberoi International School.

As the Co-founder and CTO of Spocto, her responsibilities include creating an ‘Innovation Lead Organisation’.

This includes solutions offered to its client in the banking and financial lending space. She helps them improve their performance and enhances their capabilities with solutions that are unique and driven by technology.

Spocto creates technology of the future and is investing in various cutting-edge areas such as serverless computing, financial behavioural analytics, machine learning, and AI.

Spocto, through its machine learning products, helps and works with financial institutions including banks and NBFCs to improve their collections’ efficiency using technology and optimal legal routs to expedite the resolution of bad loans.