Team Eduthon writing this to express our sincere gratitude to our readers for making the Aprajita Awards season 1 possible. We were thrilled and deeply appreciative of your support.
We received valuable thoughts from Vinutha Nagaraju who grabbed her first-ever award in the Entrepreneurship category
Let's read what she said.
How are you feeling about winning your first-ever entrepreneurship Award?
I would like to share a word of thanks to the "Aparajita Awards 2022" jury for recognizing me as the young entrepreneur of the year. It gives me immense pleasure & confidence as I receive this award. It’s a boost & surge of immense confidence for me as getting this award gives me self-belief & also a motivating factor to push a little harder on my path to creating a plainer sailing system in the society of farmers and agricultural system.
What is your opinion about Gender Equality and Diversity as a woman entrepreneur?
So, in a society where the responsibilities of the genders are not quite the same. Coming into entrepreneurship and making your way into a competitive world was the thing which has changed me upside down. It’s been 2 yrs. since I have started my firm after giving my 8 yrs. into a corporate world working in cross-functional departments. As I am a woman who likes being independent & harnessing my freedom coming into business was more of a dream rather than just following the crowd. It was more with an intent of contributing to the cause rather than looking for a financial outlook and so far, this has been a very good journey with challenges & learnings. When it comes to a job all you have to do is crack the interview & get into the organization you have been handed over some KPI and you need to perform accordingly every job has challenges but the point is when it comes to applying or creating something, the job doesn’t provide that freedom & exposure in many cases & as we are more wind up in our daily work activities, we aren’t able to think & act on the causes or on the things which we feel are more important when we observe the society. As they say
“Every great firm or company is started & succeed on the base of the strong cause or a want to contribute in society to make life easy”
The same was the case with me I wanted to help & provide something to society it was one of my key driving factors helping me continue my work in ups & downs which even I had a fair share of…but it helped me grow as a person & made my character it’s an experience I would value much higher as compared to the exposure & experience I got in the corporate world.
After entering into business, the main thing was looking to meet people understand the needs & requirements creating the things by keeping in mind a customer-centric approach. Then meeting other professional executives makes them understand the product & need of it in lives of people hoping that people will invest in the idea. Working continuously meeting the customers & ground level people understanding needs & finding a way through it to meet those needs were the most challenging areas but I made my way through it through sheer determination to contribute to a cause.
As a female, it was quite a challenging part as we are working into a male dominating society even though many males, I met were quite supportive & understanding of me still I would like to say there’s always some grey side to it. There will be people like this but we must ignore them & be faithful to ourselves & our abilities no one can stop us if we are sincere in our work & have a strong belief in ourselves. I would say we must be focused on our goal and just keep working on ourselves & our cause of helping. Don’t let anyone disrespect you always have the attitude of a lioness. Never get affected by people or situations both are powerless without your reaction.
With that thought even with my brand new startup, I wish to hire a women workforce who shall be working in my new venture as I believe that it is not just making oneself empowered but also empowering other women by giving employment to them and making them as well the breadwinners of their families. I want to keep a solid value system that shall translate into my work and my company.
I completely believe in a not giving up attitude wherein with my best and sincere intentions want to build this venture with sheer determination and hard work and also give something back to society as well.
We must always strive our way through this & the key factor in this is always having a sense of self-belief in ourselves because then only we can take challenges & come out through them. The thing I have learned is always meet people learn things understand perspectives &be committed to your dream because it's your dream & you need to water it to make it grow & shine. I also realize that with these challenges I happen to discover my inner strength and capabilities and each time it is pushing me out of my comfort zone and motivating me to be and become even a better and stronger version of myself and understanding the deeper purposes of my life.
We feel like a woman we are alone & what will do in such competitive world but I would say don’t listen to that voice it’s a just a voice trying to tell you that you are not good enough. Always try to be positive in your thoughts as they say “It always starts with you”, I would also like to mention that there were my support systems in form of my family & my cheerful friends who have given me that stability in terms of emotions& there motivating affirmations. It's too soon to be philosophical as in business it's better to be practical & in tune with reality as it’s a constantly evolving world & we need to keep up with it. Find your support systems as we need them when we are down or when we aren’t that kind to ourselves. But always keep in mind to be your own biggest supporter.
I would like to convey my message to all the females who are trying to make something of themselves & contribute to the world. It’s never too late &it’s never impossible always have that self-belief in your dream your abilities it's always us who are responsible for our success it’s the will power that counts & the main driver in the journey of a business because if you don’t firmly believe in your idea or product no one else will so first have that self-belief on your abilities& your idea or product. Leadership is a thing which you learn it isn’t gendered biased. We as females have this great ability to understand the pain behind the problems & focus on the work and strive forward with a commitment to make a difference add value wherever possible.
So, keeping our gender aside & its biases we must try to be the best of ourselves & believe in ourselves. It’s an age of diversifying technology & opportunity for everyone out there.
Thanks once again for recognizing my efforts & honouring me with this Award signing off Vinutha Nagaraju.
You can email Vinutha@westernwiindow.com
If you missed this interesting live session, don't worry you can watch it on this link