Women Entrepreneurship in Today's Dynamic Business Scenario

By: Reenita Das, Partner, Frost & Sullivan

Having completed her MS in Business, Management & Marketing from San Jose State University, Reenita has been associated with Frost & Sullivan for over 28 years now and has played a key role in the company’s success story so far.

Women Entrepreneur recently got a chance to interact with Reenita, wherein she shared her insights about the current business environment and various aspects pertaining to women entrepreneurship. Below are the excerpts from the exclusive interview.

What are the health measures that need to be taken in 2023? How can we improvise healthcare in Indian rural areas?

The focus has been only on sick care rather than healthcare over the last few centuries. Thus, it is very much essential to move from sick care to healthcare for the betterment of our future generations. This means that focus should be more on screening and prevention by equipping ourselves right from our early childhood till death. This way, healthcare providers can predict illnesses earlier on and personalize the treatments accordingly to each patient.

Secondly, healthcare providers must bring care right to the patients on community level, which can be achieved by setting-up primary care centers across the country. Also, there is also a lot of demand and scope to build tech innovations in the areas of energy and information communication technology to make healthcare more accessible to patients in rural areas. Consumerization of care is another aspect that is fast becoming the need-of-the-hour today. Furthermore, building the necessary infrastructure on cloud or on-premise is paramount while developing and implementing any technology in today’s dynamic business landscape.

What are your thoughts on less number of women participation in the Indian STEM industry today? How can this scenario be improved?

Almost 43 percent of women in India are currently pursuing STEM based careers or are graduated in that area. This percentage is really encouraging as compared to that in US or UK where there are very less number of women opting for STEM education or career. However, if you look at it from a workplace point of view, lesser than 29 percent of the women who graduate from STEM actually go ahead to pursue a career in the field. Furthermore, in terms of outcomes and performance, only three percent of women are CEOs or hold other management positions in the entire subcontinent. This low percentage is a clear indication of the fact that there still exist a lot hassles at workplace with regards to women with STEM background getting into senior leadership.

Companies need to be more dedicated towards creating a conducive atmosphere for women to work in by creating mentorship and gender equality programs for them within the workplace. Organizations must also train their male employees on basis etiquettes such as how to talk to a female co-worker, the kind of language that must be used and various other factors.

What are the future challenges for the healthcare sector in developed nations?

Building primary care and the necessary infrastructure, along with having suitable tools to manage electronic medical records are some of the key aspects that healthcare providers must work on in order to overcome any challenges that may arise. Since diabetes is known to be one of the most common diseases in almost all healthcare markets across the world today, building awareness programs around it and educating children from a very early age about it is very important in today’s times. I strongly believe that it is the responsibility of every individual to contribute actively in the well-being of the society by taking the necessary precautions and maintaining a healthy lifestyle to stay wary of diabetes and many other similar lifestyle diseases. From a corporate point of view, companies need to educate their employees about healthy eating habits and provide them wellness programs.

According to you, what are the right strategies and commercial business models to succeed?

In terms of commercial business models in today’s context, service has become an integral part of how companies move ahead in modern day ecosystem. For instance, software as a medical device is a huge business today, wherein organizations are monetizing data that is emerging out of the medical devices. Also, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is enabling companies to create different apps & solutions on a platform and offering them either to hospitals or directly to the consumers. Thus, I feel that service model is one of the most important aspects of how businesses move ahead in this dynamic ecosystem. However, to build a successful service model, one has to look into numerous aspects pertaining to that ecosystem.

What is the most valuable lesson you have learnt during your entrepreneurial journey so far?

The most valuable lesson that I have learnt is resilience, which isn’t taught to anyone in life and just happens. For this, you need to stay strong and continue working towards your goals. A leader must always be prepared to face any kind of ups & downs and make sure to accept both of them with equal importance. Also, I always look at a challenge as an opportunity to both improve myself and also prove my ability to my customers. Furthermore, I personally believe that learning and growing go hand-in-hand and thus work accordingly by being always being open to any kind of learning that I might come across.