Women Entrepreneurship in Fintech - A Brief Overview

By: Archana Elapavuluri, Co-Founder & CEO, Pickright Technologies

Archana Elapavuluri has completed her Masters in Computer Science from Kakatiya University, Archana boasts of a 23-year-long career during which she has handled key roles across an array of companies such as HCL Perot Systems, Ness Technologies, Oracle, 10i Commerce Services, prior to co-founding Pickright in 2019. Additionally, she has also incepted another company named ‘Wanthandmade’, which was an exclusive marketplace for a wide variety of handmade products.

Women Entrepreneur team recently got a chance to interact with Archana, wherein she shared her insights pertaining to women entrepreneurship in the fintech space and various other aspects. Below are the excerpts of the exclusive interaction –

Tell us about yourself and your company – Pickright Technologies.

I am the co-founder of Pickright Technologies, which is a wealth tech startup that was started in 2019 along with my other co-founder Naman. We incepted Pickright with the vision to create a nextgen wealth tech platform that enables individuals to seamlessly invest and get a fully comprehensive financial planning in a single click, where they can invest in multi asset classes. At Pickright, I take care of marketing, administration, regulatory compliance and execution.

What investment strategies should young people with low finances inculcate to ensure they have a sizable corpus by the time they retire?

Not taking any loans is a major strategy youngsters can implement in this regard. Today, India is a loan based country, wherein everybody seeks instant gratification. The first strategy a person must follow is to ‘save now & buy later’ instead of ‘buy now, pay later’. Everybody must learn to live their own earnings and invest at least 10-15 percent of their monthly income in the right portfolio, which can be a combination of mutual funds, gold & equity. This way, they will be able to build a very good corpus by the time they retire. Compound interest is an amazing concept, wherein once you start investing in it, you can reap amazing returns. However, one must make sure to maintain consistency in their investments and focus more on the long-term plans & benefits.

How has fintech aided in investment diversification?

These are amazing times for the fintech industry. Fintech has not only aided investments, but has eased many financial processes such as money transfer, bank account opening, demat account opening and many others. Everything being digital today, the ease of operations factor is undergoing a significant in recent times.

As a woman, what difficulties did you face during your journey as a woman entrepreneur?

In my opinion, there are no separate difficulties for a male entrepreneur or a female entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship in itself is a very difficult and lonely journey. Although only an entrepreneur can understand the turmoil that another entrepreneur is going through, they still can’t imagine themselves in other person’s shoes because every entrepreneur’s journey is different.

To me personally, making people understand the importance of wealth management has been a real uphill task so far. There were also times when it used to be very difficult to manage things at both my home and office simultaneously. There are important things on either sides; kids’ education at home, and managing employees at workplace, for example. So prioritizing between such scenarios is often a very tiresome and mentally stressful process.

What leadership mantra would you like to convey to aspiring women entrepreneurs? 

Every person who wants to start-up on their own and embrace entrepreneurship must first do a thorough market research as to what kind of industry they are getting into. Based on that, they need to do a self-analysis as to whether they possess the specific skillsets that the industry demands and if they are strong enough mentally and physically to sail their business to safety during tough times. Also, having a co-founder along with you is always an added advantage in your entrepreneurship journey. However, one must ensure to choose a person who not only shares your views & ideals, but also is a reliable person with whom you can talk, work and share.

Furthermore, ever get deterred if you ever commit a mistake or have failed at something. Be brave and don’t pay much attention other people’s opinions & judgments towards you. Start socializing and networking with as many people as possible, and learn as many things as you can from them. Most importantly, have faith in yourself. 

If you are working on a regular job under someone else, your experience would be limited. This is because you are then only exposed to a specific set of tasks that are responsible for. Your horizon will never expand unless you start handling different roles or even multiple roles at once. On the lop side, the number of scenarios that are entrepreneurship exposes you to is unlimited, thus multiplying experience manifold.