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Priya Naidu writes founder and leadership stories for The Weekend Leader. She covers first-generation entrepreneurs, business leaders and social changemakers, and is most interested in the decisions and setbacks that shaped their journeys. Have a story to share? Reach her through the Share Your Story page.
Rejected by eleven investors, she bootstrapped a delivery network with six second-hand scooters. Today it moves two lakh parcels a day.
Meera Iyer · Founder & CEO, SwiftLane Logistics
Arjun Mehta runs a 9,000-person engineering company. One day a week he still works a shift — and it has…
Arjun Mehta · Managing Director, Northstar EngineeringDr. Kavya Nair’s ₹1,999 hearing aid is solar-charged, repairable in any village and now used by more than 60,000 people.
Dr. Kavya Nair · Co-founder & Chief Scientist, SoundSeed LabsLakshmi Devi started with evening classes in a temple courtyard. Her cooperative now sells handloom to buyers in 14 countries.
Lakshmi Devi · Founder, Nesam Weavers CollectiveRohan Das started a WhatsApp group to help five friends prepare for interviews. Four years later, 3 lakh learners use…
Rohan Das · Founder, CodeChaiThe first woman to lead her family’s century-old textile group explains how she modernised it without losing its soul.
Priya Kapoor · Chairperson, Kapoor Mills GroupVikram Reddy lost everything in his first venture. What he learned from that failure built one of India’s fastest-growing agritech…
Vikram Reddy · Co-founder & CEO, FieldNextAt 61, Suresh Patil used his pension and banking network to fund community-run water filters. Nineteen years later, the villages…
Suresh Patil · Founder, Jal Mitra TrustSunita and Ananya Rao turned a grandmother’s recipes into a direct-to-consumer brand that ships to 22 countries.
Ananya Rao · Co-founder, Ammamma’s KitchenRahul Menon took charge of a regional airline weeks from shutdown. His playbook is about people as much as numbers.
Rahul Menon · Chief Executive Officer, SkyBridge RegionalImran Sheikh’s low-cost extrusion process has converted 4,000 tonnes of plastic into furniture for 1,100 government schools.
Imran Sheikh · Founder, ReForm WorksDeepa Bhatt left the civil services to build a lending platform for women-led village businesses. Its repayment rate is 98.6…
Deepa Bhatt · Founder & CEO, Sakhi Capital