When back in 1997, senior journalist Shobha Warrier interviewed Padma Shri awardee Ashok Jhunjhunwala, who incubated over 100 companies at IIT Madras, little did she know about entrepreneurship. Call it ironic, but Shobha has now authored two successive books on entrepreneurship — Dreamchasers: Entrepreneurs from the South of the Vindhyas and the follow-up to it, Dreamchasers: Women Entrepreneurs from the South of the Vindhyas . She credits Jhunjhunwala with her fascination towards the subject. “I was drawn to it because of Jhunjhunwala. He had an incubation centre at IIT Madras long before we started using terms like ‘startup’. When I interviewed him, he spoke about the centre and wanted me to meet a few entrepreneurs,” she says. Her life came a full circle when Jhunjhunwala eventually wrote the foreword to her first book.
Shobha began her career as a creative writer in Malayalam, with several short stories to her credit. Since it was, sort of, a lonely journey, she decided to become a journalist, hoping to meet new people everyday. “Many dissuaded me and warned me not to take up journalism. Whether I got recognised or not, I wanted to meet new people and write about them,” she says. When the first part was launched last year, it acted as a blueprint for those who wanted to venture into startups. At the same time, it also irked some women entrepreneurs who questioned why the book featured very few women. “When I wrote it, I hadn’t thought about the gender angle. However, the disparity in the number of male and female entrepreneurs was huge. And that’s how I ended up writing my new book.”
While there are scores of entrepreneurs out there, it was rather too easy for Shobha to hand-pick names. “I interviewed these people as a journalist. I know them personally and somehow, their stories touched me. For example, I met Vandana of Banyan in 1999, when she was staying at Anna Nagar. I interviewed Shanthi Ranganathan at TTK Road and so on,” she added. The book profiles 14 women entrepreneurs: their achievements and hardships. It begins with 74-year-old Dr Deborah Thiagarajan, an American, who came to India around 30 years back to set up DakshinaChitra at East Coast Road in Chennai. “It took an American to showcase our art and culture,” she remarks.
Shobha hopes that the tales will inspire more people into building their own startups. “For instance, Shanthi Ranganathan became a widow at 33. Her husband was an alcoholic and she had to take him to America for medication. Instead of sitting in the house, she decided to start TTK hospital, which is touted to be Asia’s first de-addiction centre,” says Shobha, adding that she has a soft corner for social entrepreneurs. In an earlier interview, Shobha had stated that only two out of 10 startups make the cut. Acknowledging that the scenario hasn’t changed much, she says, “This is something I concluded after talking to a lot of young people. You have to have a strong determination and an excellent support system to be successful.”
Through this book, Shobha gradually realised that her own dream is to continue the Dreamchasers series. “Not just for readers, even for me, I felt so small writing about them. These people have done so much for society that it gives me a vicarious satisfaction,” she says, adding that the third part is on the cards.
Dreamchasers: Women Entrepreneurs from the South of the Vindhyas (Vitasta Publications) was launched by Minister for Tamil Official Language, Tamil Culture and Archaeology, Tamil Nadu, Ma Foi Pandiarajan, on October 13.
