At a time when women are making their presence felt in almost every sector, two woman entrepreneurs from Hubballi have made the city proud through their ventures.
While Deepali Gotadke has kept Hubballi ‘clicking’ through her e-commerce website clickhubli.com, Shravani Pawar is empowering women from the marginalised sections by providing them economic independence through ‘Safe Hands 24x7’.
An engineering graduate from Walchand College of Engineering, Sangli, Ms. Gotadke is the brain behind clickhubli.com, the first e-commerce site to be launched and operated from Hubballi. There was no looking back for her after she was adjudged the ‘High-performing woman IT entrepreneur' at the Bengaluru IT.biz.
Ms. Gotadke and her team have so far designed and developed more than 600 websites for various clients, including some government agencies. As a result, when you search for ‘e-commerce consultant in India’ in Linkedin, Deepali’s profile comes at the top. Ms. Gotadke also represented Karnataka in the 40-plus category at the National Women Table Tennis championship in Chandigarh where the team won a gold medal.
Ms. Pawar’s achievements are no less. Beginning her entrepreneurial journey in 2009, she has turned hundreds of village and destitute women into security guards and made them economically independent.
With ‘Safe Hands 24x7’, the first service industry in Karnataka to offer women security guards, Ms. Pawar now has her clients are spread across the State and an employee network of over 400.
While the victory in the business plan contest of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs), Hubballi in 2007 gave her the seed money for her venture, Deshpande Foundation assisted Ms. Pawar in her social entrepreneurship project. She was honoured as ‘Women Entrepreneur 2011’, by TiE Stree Shakti, Mumbai. Now Ms. Pawar is one of the few female licensed trainers approved by the government of India to train security guards.
Ms. Pawar has won many laurels through her venture and her story was also telecast on ‘Amazing Indians’ show. But despite the achievement, she is humble and feels that her biggest satisfaction is that she could help underprivileged women.