Women Making Impact - India

Minal Anand is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer at GuruQ, a unique and integrated digital tutoring platform that promises to bring high quality standards and new age methodologies to the way education is imparted in India. A graduate in Business Administration from the School of Management at Boston University, Minal had worked at companies like Franklin Templeton, Citigroup to gain relevant experience in business planning, fund raising, enterprise design and structuring, and talent management.

She returned to India to join Delhi-based HPL Additives as Manager - Corporate Development. However, the glaring difference between the education sector at home versus overseas drove Minal to explore the ed-tech sector – one of India’s most prolific segments and want to improve it.She had previously taught several under-privileged school students and it is this very experience that armed her with the required knowledge to pursue her idea.Education in our country centers around bookish knowledge and traditional learning that is a disadvantage to students when they compete with international peers.A fresh perspective on education and innovative ways of teachingvia certified,qualified tutors,must be infused into the education sector, to give our students a winning edge.

With Minal at the helm, GuruQ is off to a promising start andbound to make a positive change in the education sector.

Dr. Isha is a Sensory Integration Therapy Certified and Licensed Occupational Therapist with over 13 years experience as a Pediatric Occupational Therapist.Additionally led multidisciplinary teams and set up Therapy and Child Development Centres. Love to play with children, give Parent Training and provide complete transparency in the therapeutic journey of a child. Strongly practising the Secret - Ask ,Believe and Receive

Akanksha Sharma is a young entrepreneur who has dressed her family business lineage with a dash of innovation, all rooted in sound business ethics and technology. As a youthful leader with strong self-belief, she established the unique business of all natural baby products at the young age of 22 years.

With an education in Apparel Industry Management from Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, Los Angeles United States of America, Akanksha continues to approach business through her multidimensional understanding of concepts and ideas.

At the young age of 24 years, this TEDx speaker is already an inspiration to many young women who wish to live and thrive on their own terms. As a person of sound business ethics and leadership, Akanksha is known to be a dynamic risk taker who is humble and determined to make things happen. She remains goal driven but extremely flexible as well. This is one reason for the grand success of her growing business of baby personal care products that goes under the name of CITTA.

As a completely homegrown brand, CITTA epitomizes the clear ethos of conscious business practices, with products that uphold the highest standards of manufacturing practices too. The brand is unique in the ways it is a perfect amalgamation of Indian traditions and new age scientific technology.

Having had travelled and educated abroad, Akanksha brings with her sound business knowledge, qualities of strategizing and inspiring likes of her age. She is known to be a calm team player, an empathetic introspective individual and an intuitive listener. Her mantra of entrepreneurship is deeply inspired from her father’s personal challenges and growth curve as a successful businessman.

As someone who oversees her brand’s growth story, she is carefully involved in the R&D of each product.

Akanksha envisions CITTA to be an Indian household name for skincare products for children. She launched the brand along with her mother, Monisha Sharma (Director of The Lexicon Group & Co-Founder of CITTA) inspired from learnings from old age recipes that work wonders on growing babies and children.

Nishtha was appointed as the Head of Office for Timor-Leste in UN Women, the entity of the United Nations that is dedicated to working towards Gender Equality and Woman's Empowerment in September 2021. She was the former Deputy Country Representative for UN Women in India and served as the Officer in Charge starting January 2018. As the youngest woman to head a country office for UN Women amongst 193 countries, Nishtha Satyam is an unapologetic feminist, a trained economist with a keen interest in applied macroeconomic and fiscal policy. In her long-standing career in the United Nations, she has managed the UN Women Office for a geo-politically diverse group of countries including India, Bhutan, Maldives and Sri Lanka. 

She has also served as the Private Sector Partnerships Specialist with the Office of the Resident Coordinator of the United Nations and UNDP. Prior to her career with the UN, Nishtha worked with leading firms such as KPMG and American Express as an Economist. As a futurist and feminist, she is a loud advocate of the urgency to mainstream women across the marketplace, workplace and community. Nishtha serves on several national and international committees including the national committee to review CEDAW, the advisory board on programming on Artificial Intelligence of Global Policy Insights, the national committee to review Gender Budgeting, amongst many others. As a policy expert to Goverments.

Her interest lies in the intersection of policy, politics and people to foster lasting change for the most marginalized. She is well known columnist with leading dailies in India and is currently working on a book that captures the 25 landmark judgements that changed the course of gender equality in India. Nishtha holds a Master's Degree in International Business from the University of Nottingham, UK and a Bachelors in Economics from Delhi University.

A seasoned entrepreneur, designer, mentor, and mother of two, Khushei Aggarwal is a woman of many hats. Hailing from a small town in Haryana, Khushei is breaking the glass ceiling with her private label manufacturing company, Casa Joya.

Khushei, who juggles multiple duties, is a role model for many women because she has shown her mettle in the face of many obstacles. Women still struggle to make a name for themselves in the business world and hold back because of numerous social constraints and responsibilities. She has skilfully carved out a niche for herself in the fashion world by working with many labels in both the domestic and international markets.

Khushei has the full support of her husband, Himangshu Aggarwal who is playing an equal role in realising her ambition. The duo brings to the company their shared values, trust, and professional acumen. Their familiarity with each other’s work styles, passions, and unique skills fuelled the success of Casa Joya. 

Himangshu is an IT professional by training. He left his full-time IT job and took on the responsibility of managing operations in 2014, as Casa Joya started growing significantly. They started the business in 2012, just after getting married.

Khushei has years of management experience in the corporate industry and a teenage passion for apparel design and making. Having managed, created, and launched online fashion brands for both domestic and foreign markets, Khushei has a strong and well-established track record. With extensive experience in retail sales and distribution, Khushei assures profitability by maximising the use of available resources through smart distribution planning. She has excellent communication skills and a strong reputation for motivating teams to achieve corporate objectives.

Nehal Mota, Co-founder of Finnovate, is a successful financial services professional with close to 20 years of industry experience under her belt. She is known among her peers for her passion, non conformist attitude & resilience.

She is a B.Com, MBA and has completed her MDP from IIM Indore.

Finnovate is India’s first end-to-end ecosystem to manage your financial life and reach Life Goals. In a way of explanation- Finnovate is a wealth tech platform which offers unbiased holistic personalised financial planning and investment solutions to working professionals, high-networth individuals and families.

· Finnovate is a Financial Fitness Management company that uses a hybrid tech+advisory model to enable busy professionals reach their financial fitness goals by focussing on all aspects of their financial health - Budgeting, Risk and Investments

· Our expertise lies in helping clients build a holistic perspective of their financial fitness needs throughout their lifetime, and thereafter partnering with them to

· Build their personal FinnFit plan that would help them achieve their lifelong financial fitness.

· Choose research backed investments across diverse asset classes, suited to their personalised plan

· Implement the plan seamlessly using our dedicated service team

· Monitor Portfolio real time on FinnTrak

· Review and Rebalance portfolio based on changing life circumstances & dynamic Financial Markets and therefore

· Funding: A round of approximately $1 million in 2022.

Dr. Meraj Farheen Ansari is an Artificial Intelligence researcher and work as a Cybersecurity Engineer for a Fortune 500 financial firm in Chicago, IL. She received her Ph.D. in Information Technology, Master of Information Security Systems from University of the Cumberlands, and MBA (Management in Information Systems – Human Resource Management) from Concordia University Mequon, WI. Her research interests include emerging technologies such as Cybersecurity, AI, big data, blockchain, Internet of things and cloud computing.

FLEDGE INSTITUTE OF AVIATION & HOSPITALITY, a unit of MYFLEDGE PRIVATE LIMITED is known as the fastest-growing brand in the field of Vocational Training in India, spanning industries such as Aviation and Hospitality. Over the years it has consequently transformed countless careers and has inspired many to join us in our efforts to provide vocational skills to the youth of India.

The brand FLEDGE is known for its core expertise in Cabin Crew Training and Commercial Pilot License programs with International & National Accreditations and process-based Operations and Placement support. FLEDGE INSTITUTE OF AVIATION & HOSPITALITY offers well researched and customized courses that help one prepare for the Industry. FLEDGE offers courses in the field of Aviation and Hospitality, Pilot Training, Aircraft Maintenance Engineering, Hotel Management and Event Management.

The Courses offered by the Fledge institute are industry recognized and job-oriented as it covers not only communication skills and personality development but also in-depth knowledge about aircraft and flight safety protocols.