Catalysing women’s growth

Her belief that an entrepreneur’s major responsibility is to offer solutions to real-time problems has been the driving force for serial entrepreneur Sairee Chahal in all her ventures over the past 18 years. Providing a holistic platform to women to voice their issues at workplace and at personal level was what led Sairee to launch Sheroes, her latest venture, that has been creating waves across the country. With an MPhil from JNU, and a PGDBM from IMT Ghaziabad, Sairee, who is also an Aspen Leadership Fellow, kickstarted her professional career while still in college before co-founding her first start-up Newslink in 1999. Later on she went on to also work at corporates like Heidrick and Struggles and CII. Sairee is credited with building up women-at-work and future-of-work conversations in India, besides building a strong technology play to solve the problems of gender disparity in India. Excerpts from an interaction wherein she shares her vision and Sheroes success story:

What is the Sheroes story?  

Conceptualised in 2014 as a support ecosystem for women, Sheroes is an online community platform for women. Essentially, we’re catalysing women’s growth and potential through constructive engagement. In a sense, we’re building a unique women-only social network that can be accessed via Sheroes.com and the SHEROES app.  The app was launched in 2017. 

In terms of communities, we are focused on aspects like career guidance, love and relationships, health and parenting. However, we have seen a need for more focus on areas where women need additional support. This led us to set up the Maala community, which is dedicated to supporting survivors of domestic abuse. We also just launched a maths community. 

How has your venture helped women? 

I suppose we have helped women in myriad ways —  from supporting them through mentorship; some women have benefited via legal advice, others through counselling, and mentorship, and some just through conversations. Sheroes is many things to many women. A young community member —  an entrepreneur who is building a business for ergonomic maternity and nursing wear, described us as a “hug”, which tells you that it’s all going to be fine. Over the years, women have shared their experiences and this has motivated us to continue building what, we have set out to you. 

Women in India, especially in the workspace, face a lot of challenges do you think companies are doing enough for them?

I believe it is difficult to build a culture that is inclusive for women, without building an overall inclusive culture that centres on empathy. For instance, IBM India has built up an inter-sectional, gender-equal work culture — they have women in leadership positions, they have women with disabilities, and transgender women, and employees who identify as queer. In 2017, we did a campaign with a top IT major that wanted to promote its returning women’s programme, which brought in the kind of understanding and sensitivity needed to support women returning from a career break. One of our partners, KLAY Schools through its onsite daycare network in offices across the country has brought about a much-needed revolution for working mothers. 

Other steps include building flexible and remote frameworks and designing leadership pathways for women. Having a concrete plan to tackle sexual harassment is a must, but this does not end with a no-tolerance policy. There’s a greater need to address the cultural factors influencing the sexual harassment narrative, through on-going trainings and conversations at workplaces; everyone is learning, even leaders. 

Tell us about your other ventures and how successful those have been.

I started my first start-up Newslink in 1999 with a couple of friends, when the internet was beginning to boom in India. This was the country’s first magazine for mariners and had operations in India, Philippines and Cyprus. I led the team for three years and during that period, the workforce expanded to 130 members. That was kind of my training ground.  

With Sheroes there are around 2 million registered users since its inception and the network reach has gone up to 18 million in a little over four years. With SHEROES app  women can chat with our counsellors at any time of the day, literally about anything. They can post their queries, and the entire community responds in seconds.  Women are logging in to the app from over 167 cities in India. They are also communicating in Hindi, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil and Kannada, which is why we have started publishing content in these languages, too. 

— As told to Geetu Vaid