Women, to march ahead, need opportunities, not speeches," says Sairee Chahal. True to her word, Chahal, a business graduate from IMT Ghaziabad, with an M.Phil from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, has taken upon herself the task of bringing career opportunities to women.
In January 2014, she launched SHEROES, a job portal dedicated exclusively to women job seekers. "It's the only platform that provides a career eco-system for women," says Chahal. SHEROES offers a mix of work opportunities— full time, flexible work options, entrepreneurial work options, internships, projects, etc. It engages with businesses to help them connect with female talent as employees, partners, customers and business owners.
Besides providing women access to jobs, the platform also helps them with mentorship and career support programmes. "Once you create a profile, you can explore opportunities, consume career content, connect with mentors or participate in various activities and career events," explains Chahal, Founder and CEO.
The idea of SHEROES evolved from Chahal's previous venture, Fleximoms, a pilot project for women who took a career break. It looked at identifying flexible work options for women looking to rejoin the workforce. "The core of our philosophy has been to help women navigate career stages and find work that fits their life," says Chahal. SHEROES assists women throughout their career by offering suitable work opportunities, career resources and mentorship. "SHEROES is built on the principle that you are a job seeker a few times in your life but your career is forever," says Chahal.
The startup helps women from across the country and from diverse backgrounds. "Once a priest's wife from a village in Bihar called, asking for career help. She had studied before getting married but had never worked. We managed to help her with an opportunity. Scores of women in similar circumstances have approached us and we have been of help," says Chahal.
When Chahal, winner of the Devi Award (2014), started out, it was tough convincing stakeholders on how small changes could make a big impact to gender diversity. "We started small and stayed on course. Slowly, people started joining us and became a part of the change," she says.
Based in Noida, the 30-member strong SHEROES has clients—organisations aligned to their gender diversity goals— spread across all major cities. In 2014-15, it generated a revenue of Rs 1 crore. "We broke even in our first year of operation and now have more than 7,000 companies listed on our platform," says Chahal. The startup, while focusing on employment for women, offers need-based support to its business clients. "What works for a pre-school does not work for a Fortune 500 company. We make sure businesses meet their requirements," says Chahal.
The social and business impact of SHEROES has attracted investors' interest. In August 2015, the bootstrapped startup received a funding of Rs 5 crore from Raghav Bahl and Ritu Kapur-led Quintillion Media, 500 Startups and a clutch of prominent individuals, including Paytm's Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Google MD Rajan Anandan, and Flipkart's Binny Bansal.
Given that there are several established job portals, its exclusive focus on women also makes it stand out from the rest. "We are for businesses that are open to experiment with new models of engagement, and who consider bringing in more women in the workplace as a key enabler to their bottom line," says Chahal.
The exclusivity has been good for business and the startup, reveals Chahal, has been growing at 300% CAGR (in terms of service requests from clients and job seekers). "We just want to move the needle on women in the workplace, especially in the middle ranks, while delivering value to our clients," says Chahal.
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This article was originally published here.