STORIES OF BRAVE WOMEN WHO HAVE BRAVED IT AT HOME AND THE WORLD
While the world celebrates International Women’s Day, we take a look at some interesting women who rule their profession of choice in their own way.
Mithali Raj
Mithali Raj could well have become a fleet-footed dancer but she instead chose to dance down the cricket pitch to haul a few over the ropes. Captain of the Indian women’s cricket team, Mithali wears the Indian blue with pride and distinction. She led the Indian team into the World Cup final last year and went down fighting to the Australian girls. With that Indian women’s cricket suddenly seemed to come of age and the nation woke up to some aggressive cricket played by these girls. Overnight Mithali became the darling of social media and even advertisers.
This 35-year-old cricketer has made history by scoring 6,000 runs, the highest in women’s cricket history. She has won the hearts of millions and has become an inspiration for millions of young women across the world.
But long before Mithali chose to dance on the green, she was aspiring to be a Bharatanatyam dancer and stories about how she made the switch is doing the social rounds after she broke a daunting record of scoring the most number of runs by an Indian woman cricketer.
The 34-year-old from Hyderabad achieved the landmark during the ICC World Cup match against Australia. Mithali’s father, an officer with the Indian Air Force who later joined the Andhra Bank, started taking his daughter to the St John's coaching camp in Secunderabad when she was barely 10.
At 19, she emerged as one of India’s best batswomen with a staggering 214 against England in the second and final Test at Taunton. In 1999, she became the youngest ever ODI centurion when she scored 114 in her debut match against Ireland at Milton Keynes.
Playing for Railways in the domestic competition, Raj started by playing with the likes of Purnima Rau, Anjum Chopra and Anju Jain for Air India, and the journey that saw her surpass those big names continues.
Under the watchful eyes of Sampath Kumar at Keyes School, Raj honed her game and it did not take long for the strict coach to predict that she would not only go on to play for India but also break many records.
Cricket may have happened by chance after a brush with dance, but it is not for nothing that Raj has been ruling the 22 yards.
Sharmila Nicollet
Sharmila Nicollet is not just a golfer but she has become a brand. At only 25 this Indo-French professional golfer was the youngest golfer to qualify for the Ladies European Tour. She won the 2009-10 Order of Merit from the Women’s Golf Association of India.
Sharmila is India’s biggest mascot in golf among women and is, in fact, one of the important faces in the golfing world. But Sharmila is not just a golfer she also loves to play the piano, loves Sudoku and uses Yoga as meditation but loves to indulge in shopping. She is also an ace swimmer with more than 72 medals in state and national meets and quite a linguist speaking French, English, Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Kannada and Urdu.
Nicollet did her schooling in Bishop Cotton Girls’ School and Bangalore International school finishing her 10th grade and 12th grade privately. Her game took precedence and she started travelling with it. An Indo-French person, she explored the sport in full spirit, practised regularly and then started playing on Asian and European Tours. Nicollet was also the youngest lady golfer to win the All-India Ladies Amateur Championship in 2007–2008.
Poonam Rani Malik
A gritty girl from Haryana’s Hisar, Poonam Rani Malik leads the charge in women’s hockey in the Indian team. Dribbling her way into the India team at a young age of 15 in 2008, Poonam has been in the squad that took part in two Hockey World Cups, in 2010 and 2014.
A little girl from Hisar’s Umra village, Poonam showed glimpses of class from an early age backed with consistency and determination. She was only 15 years when she made her debut for the India senior team in the four-nation tournament in the Netherlands in 2008. But it was five years later at the Junior World Cup in Germany that Poonam Malik was able to capture the imagination of the sporting world by helping India finish third and earning a bronze medal. The victory was not only a milestone for the young Poonam but was historic for India too.
Leading the main thrust as a forward in the team, Poonam is a perfect symphony of skill, class and consistency under trying circumstance and has managed to script many a great victory for the Indian over and over again. The girl from Umra has played more than 160 matches over the years and is now considered to be one of the most experienced and dependable players in the Indian side.
Poonam’s initial inspiration to wield the hockey stick came from watching the village boys and girls dribble around in front of our house in the government school grounds as part of the village team. Her desire to wield the stick took a firm resolve when the women’s team won the gold at the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England. The girl from Hisar has gone on to score more than 30 international goals to her credit. Today she’s an icon for every aspiring girl in Indian’s cities, towns and villages.
Ananya Birla
Ananya Birla is a unique mix of a successful singer turned successful entrepreneur. Who would imagine that a pop star would end up founding a microfinance company to help women in rural India access finance? Yes, you heard it right.
On the one hand, Ananya has nearly seven million YouTube views of her single Meant To Be while on the other hand, she is building a women-led emerging empire to become an agent of social change and advocate women’s rights in India and the world. Not only does Ananya enjoy being at the top of her singing career, selling millions of records and gracing international magazine covers but she also thrives on creating companies that give power and support to women in India and the world.
She founded Svatantra Microfinance to help women in rural India access finance and is also the Founder of CuroCarte, an inventory-based global luxury e-commerce platform and Co-founder of Mpower, a mental health organisation. These inspiring endeavours have earned her the ET Panache Trendsetters of 2016 award for Young Business Person and the Gold Award for Best StartUp (Skoch Financial Inclusion and Deepening Awards, 2014).
Ananya has always had a penchant for doing things differently, and as she taught herself to play the guitar using internet video tutorials, she created a love affair with music that only grew as time passed.
Before realizing her true talent and passion for music, Ananya had already cut out a spot for herself among the elite in the business world. While most teenagers at the age of 17 are getting ready to graduate high school and find their path in life, Ananya was creating her first start-up, Svatantra Microfinance. With a strong vision for helping the poor become economically selfsustainable, Ananya created the microfinance organization to support women entrepreneurs in the Indian rural areas to further grow their business.
The company soon grew into a large organization with more than 600 employees across 70 branches in four Indian states and went on to win the Gold Award for Best Start-Up. A woman with no limits, Ananya’s second business, CuroCarte, curates rare, high quality, handicrafts designed for the 21st-century luxe society from across the globe and makes them accessible through an e-commerce platform.
A true inspiration for young people everywhere, Ananya hasn’t wasted any time realizing what she wants in life. Cultivating what she has learned from her years of schooling at Oxford University and her acute awareness of the
inequalities that plague us every day, Ananya hopes to create a positive global change in the world one project at a time.
Divakar Roopa Moudgil
She found herself in the middle of a controversy as the Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Prisons of Karnataka when she went public over the perks being accorded to fallen AIADMK leader and J. Jayalalitha’s longtime friend Sasikala after she was sent to prison over a disproportionate assets case. Roopa Moudgil an IPS officer of the 2001 batch from Karnataka fell foul of the system and her bosses when she flagged Sasikala’s privileges in jail. Soon shunted from her post, Roopa took it in her stride as she found herself transferred often for standing her ground on principles not getting bullied by the system and the powers be.
She has been awarded the prestigious President’s Police Medal for Meritorious Service and the Digital Women Award 2017 for bringing in a digital transformation in the road safety and traffic department as head of road safety and traffic.
In her 17-year career, she has been frequently transferred every year. Her association with the Khaki dress has been since her long association as an NCC cadet. She secured 43rd rank in civil services examination and opted for the IPS.
She set an example for the young officers that there is no need to fear about the corrupted system and it's loopholes if one thinks what they are doing is right.
Roopa may have been at the wrong end of her superiors for walking the straight and narrow in the difficult world of khaki where political interference makes most police officers bend to the whims and fancies of the powerful. But she has no regrets and has found overwhelming support from the people for her courage and conviction.
Smita Sabharwal
At a very young age, Smita Sabharwal managed to crack the most competitive exam in the country – the UPSC – and ranked an impressive fourth in the all-India competition. She was only 23 and became the youngest officer to assume office as the additional secretary at the chief minister’s office in the newly formed state of Telangana. She became popular as the people’s officer after her very popular campaign called the “Fund Your City’ in Warangal. It touched a chord with the people as she appealed to the residents to help the government build much-needed infrastructure in the Naxalite-affected regions. The “Fund Your City” scheme was designed to build much-needed public utilities like the foot over bridges, traffic junctions, parks, bus-stops, under an enterprising Public-Private Partnership model. She also worked with vigour and innovative ideas in the health and education departments in the fledgeling state.
Telangana is far from where Smita grew up in the scenic hills of Darjeeling. She, however, did her schooling in different parts of the country, finishing her schooling from the St Ann’s school in Maredpally in Hyderabad where she topped the all-India ICSE Class XII examination. She went on to graduate in Commerce from the St Francis Degree College for women in Hyderabad after which she ranked in the Civil Services exam.
After 14 years in the service, Smita still works with the same idealism and wages a daily battle against corruption, negligence in government duty and illegal activities. Her work for the public good speaks for itself and has earned the sobriquet of a people’s officer.
Monica Malhotra Kandhari
As a young girl, Monica was passionate about singing, dancing, and basketball. But the thing that really drove her at a young age was the craving for learning. This led her to start working at the age of 15. She wanted to know what her father did at work and how he handled different business situations and would go and work in different departments in publishing after school every day. “Where my classmates bunked classes at times for a movie or so, I did for work and office.”
Monica’s own style of working has emerged from her father’s style, “My dad was a Karma Yogi and I idolise him. He taught me to learn from my mistakes, to be humble, to never stop learning. While he taught me to aim for the sky he also told me that creating job opportunities is the greatest social work. Do not learn tricks of the trade instead learn the trade. He also taught me ‘either be the best or the biggest at work’.”
Today she is Managing Director at MBD Group. She has always been drawn to the education sector and enjoys working towards bringing new techniques in the field of education.
Given that there are multiple verticals that need attention and the group as a whole needs dedicated attention, Monica’s business mantra is to keep the business backwards and forward integrated as much to have better control on costs, time, and quality. Her focus is to create a fine blend of rigidity and flexibility in policies that help keep the team motivated. She wants the group to be recognised as futuristic and visionary.
Currently MBD Group is spread over 37 cities in India with their branch offices and also has its international operations in South Africa, Sri Lanka and the Middle East. Moreover the MBD Group has also diversified into hospitality and real estate sectors and is a name to reckon with.
MBD Group has added new age digital content and publishing including AR, VR and Robotics to its bouquet of education services that is used by over 7 million users, truly transforming from a publishing house to the largest education company in the country. It is striding towards becoming an edutainment company. Ranging from content for students to enabling teachers in the classroom, MBD Group takes the needs of every stakeholder in the education sector seriously. MBD Disha, the flagship teacher capacity building programme for developing teaching skill and techniques is focused on enhancing skills and knowledge of approximately 50,000 teachers annually. That’s quite an achievement, but for those at the helm of the MBD Group, have proved it time and again that targets are what they meet, and excellence is what they achieve.