Top Women Founders Who Switched Careers to Build Iconic Businesses

By: Ayushi Dutta, Senior Correspondent

Aditi Gupta, Co-founder, Menstrupedia: From Illustrator to Menstrual Health Educator

Aditi Gupta's professional training was in design and illustration. She studied at the National Institute of Design and developed skills as a graphic novelist but eventually channelled those creative abilities into an issue that had affected her since childhood: the silence and stigma surrounding menstruation. Growing up in a small town, Aditi experienced firsthand how little information many young girls received about periods. Instead of pursuing a conventional career in design, she chose to use visual storytelling as a tool for education.

Alongside her husband, Tuhin Paul, she co-founded Menstrupedia, developing comic-based resources that explain menstruation to young girls in an accessible and age-appropriate way. The venture combined Aditi's creative background with social entrepreneurship, with its business model including book sales, school programmes, workshops, and corporate CSR partnerships. More importantly, Menstrupedia helped bring menstrual education into conversations that were traditionally avoided in homes and classrooms. By transforming a taboo subject into approachable visual content, Aditi demonstrated how creative skills can create meaningful social impact.

Khushboo Jain, Co-founder, ImpactGuru: From Luxury Fashion to Healthcare Crowdfunding

Khushboo Jain's early professional life belonged to the world of luxury fashion. She spent more than a decade working in fashion marketing and communications, including experience with international brands such as Jimmy Choo and Hackett. Her eventual move into healthcare finance could hardly have been more different. Khushboo wanted to build something with a more direct social impact and co-founded ImpactGuru with her husband, Piyush Jain.

The platform uses crowdfunding to help patients and families raise money for expensive medical treatments. The shift required Khushboo to move from communicating the value of luxury brands to addressing one of India's most difficult healthcare challenges: the financial burden of serious illness. ImpactGuru has helped thousands of patients raise funds for critical medical procedures, giving families an alternative to relying entirely on personal savings or high-cost borrowing. Khushboo's journey shows that skills such as marketing, communication, and trust-building can remain valuable even when an entrepreneur moves into an entirely new sector.