Manufacturing is traditionally seen as a male-dominated industry, with very few women entrepreneurs entering the field.
Thus, it was a sign of hope that Hemalatha Annamalai, founder of Ampere Vehicles Pvt. Ltd., was conferred the Confederation of Indian Industry Southern Region (CII-SR) Emerging Entrepreneur Award.
Hailing from Coimbatore, she was one of the six winners of the award for this year.
'Ms. Annamalai said she hoped this would encourage more women to enter the field. Her company manufactures e-cycles and e-scooters.
The other winners were: Shyam Vasudeva Rao and K. Chandrasekhar from Forus Healthcare; Sanjeev from Mediff Technologies; Beas Dev Ralhan from Next Education India Pvt. Ltd.; Vinod Nambiar from Position2 Marketing Pvt. ltd; and Sundar Muruganandhan and K. Durgasharan from Versa Drives Pvt Ltd.
Speaking at the function, Prathap C. Reddy, chairman Apollo Hospitals, said more entrepreneurs need to help tackle the burden of non-communicable diseases in the country.
Emphasising the need for more entrepreneurs, K. Venugopal, director, Kasturi & Sons Ltd., said the idea of the awards was to encourage lakhs of people to take up entrepreneurship to be able to create more jobs.
Navas Meeran, chairman, CII-SR, Ramesh Datla, chairman CII-SR Emerging Entrepreneur awards 2014, and C.K. Ranganathan, co-chairman CII Innovation and entrepreneurship council, were also present.
The event was held in association with The Hindu Business Line .
Six emerging industrialists from across the State were conferred awards in recognition of their achievements
