With a sharp entrepreneurial mind, Ananya Birla founded Svatantra Microfinance Pvt. Ltd, which lends micro credit to rural entrepreneurs, predominantly women clients, through affordable and innovative financial and non-financial solutions. She followed up with Mpower, an initiative that aims to reach out to individuals with mental health disorders and their families by raising awareness, alleviating stigma, advocating prevention, fostering education, and providing world class holistic services. Most recently, Ananya launched a premium lifestyle platform, CuroCarte, which uses e-commerce to curate authentic, unique and premium handmade products from all around the globe and uses design to contemporise products for the 21st century lifestyle.
Ananya is many things; intelligent, passionate, forever nosing out a new business opportunity. Ananya has a rather hefty lineage to live up to but rather than be fazed by the family paraphernalia she embraces it, and is keen on building her own legacy.
Contrary to what one may believe, it wasn't easy living with the family surname in a country where everyone knew who she was the moment she spelt out her name. "When I was growing up, my father was naturally a very busy man and was not around for long periods of time. Despite that he was always emotionally with me. My mum shaped my initial years and made sure I was always busy learning something, doing something constructive."
"I am very lucky. My parents are very open-minded and have instilled the right values in me so I keep myself in check at all times. While my family legacy is a tradition, my parents are not as traditional," she says.
In the last 3 years, Svatantra has grown from 6 branches to 82 branches, from 8000 clients to 1.60 lakh clients from Rs 8 crore to Rs 230 crore of portfolio outstanding and from 30 employees to 700+ employees. "Much before the current demonetisation drive to create a cashless economy in India, Svatantra since 2012 has enabled more than 1.5 lakh women, in deep rural areas, to join the financial mainstream through 100 per cent cashless loan disbursements. Hence, Svatantra has not only impacted welfare of more than 4 lakh individuals, but also created a significant step forward towards the dream of financial inclusion," Ananya elaborates.
Says Ananya, "I am extremely passionate about the work I do, be it Svantantra - my first business initiative when I was 17, or CuroCarte that launched last year, and Mpower the mental health initiative that I co-founded with my mom, Neerja." "I will continue to make relevant, impactful, high quality music. In the coming years I hope to gain a higher sense of self awareness, and impact people's lives with my work," adds a confident Ananya who is an alumnus of the University of Oxford.
Her aim is to take her e-commerce business going forward and get Svatantra the status of a national bank in the near future. Moreover, "My other goal is to keep making relevant, impactful, high quality music and gain recognition as a singer/songwriter," which she has achieved to an extent through her recent foray into the international music arena.
"You need to accept yourself for who you are. I believe in leading by example, and empowering my team. I invest in human capital because at the end of the day, a motivated team is the best asset an entrepreneur can ever have," concludes a confident Ananya.
BW Reporters
The author is associate editor at BW Businessworld
