Girlbosses: Pakistan’s female entrepreneurs redefine success

KARACHI: Slowly and steadily, more and more women are making their mark in a myriad of different industries and finding their voice in spaces previously dominated by men.

The community of female entrepreneurs is small but flourishing day by day with many women cementing their foothold in the industry. 

Meet Pakistan's three female entrepreneurs who are redefining success, gender roles and changing the face of business and IT communities in the country: 

Jehan Ara

One of the most famous women in the industry, Jehan Ara has built a community to uplift start-ups and give a boost to emerging talent in the field. 

President of Pakistan Software Houses Association for IT & ITES (P@SHA) Jehan,  who has four siblings, believes that her upbringing helped her the most in realising her potential. “My parents brought us up to believe that anyone of us can do whatever we want to do.”

This is quite different from what other families tell their children. Most people define roles for girls and boys. However, Jehan said her parents told her to pursue whatever she was passionate about and whatever she thought she had the skill set for.

“All my life I have done things that I am really excited about, and I think when that happens you tend to do well,” she said. "When your passion is your driving force then nothing else matters than reaching your set target."

Being an entrepreneur is very tough and sometimes even worse than having a 9 to 5 job, she added. “My journey has been nice and long, but I have enjoyed it every step of the way.”

There was a time when jobs such as doctor and teacher were considered ‘appropriate' for women but now that is changing, Jehan remarked. “There are so many women doing amazing things in health, social and development spaces. Most women don’t care about the money they just care about the impact.”

The basic problem which stops women from realising their goals is that they tend to “second guess themselves". Women underestimate their abilities while men overestimate their abilities, she remarked. “Women shouldn’t be overconfident but they should be confident of their abilities.”

Even though women are venturing out into the business world more now but “there is still not enough of them. We need a lot more,” she added.

Danielle Sharaf

Born in Lahore, Danielle Sharaf is the founder of Switch-ITC [Ideas that Connect], which seeks to bring health solutions to women across Pakistan, linking job seekers to appropriate employment opportunities and empowering women belonging to different strata.

Speaking about her journey, Danielle told Geo.tv the biggest challenge she faced was that there was no other woman in the mobile value-added services (VAS) industry. “It took me some time to get men to take me seriously but since then there has been smooth running.”

She also shared that the idea for Switch-ITC came to her while she was running for another company. “One of our tasks was to connect job seekers to relevant jobs,” which eventually translated into Switch-ITC, she remarked.

“It has been tough, I have made many mistakes but learnt a lot in the process,” she added.

Her motivation stems from helping people from underprivileged communities. During her session at 021 Disrupt Conference 2017, she shared that once a woman from Tando Allahyar kept messaging them asking for help as her son had been electrocuted. Reacting to the messages, one of the members of Danielle’s team called a nearby doctor to help the woman and send an ambulance to the woman’s house. “This is the power of connectivity,” she remarked.

On the community of female entrepreneurs, she remarked: “It is fantastic, even if we have fewer numbers than there should be, but at least there are some women pursuing their passion.”

Danielle remarked that she feels one thing that prevents women from venturing out is “self-victimisation".

“You can’t say that you don’t do certain things because you are a woman. You should always think of yourself as an entrepreneur first then a woman,” she added.

Nadia Patel Gangjee

Nadia Patel Gangjee is the CEO and founder of Sheops.com, which is Pakistan’s first online marketplace and community for women. It connects women to buy, sell, share ideas and profit from the market. 

Sheops is a portmanteau formed from ‘she shops, she operates.”

Speaking to Geo.tv, Gangjee said she was motivated to launch Sheops because of a negative purchasing incident of her own. “The incident made me realise the lack of a safe space for women online. The story of Sheops is turning an adversity into an opportunity,” she remarked.

“I pitched my idea to friends and family and made a group on WhatsApp. That’s how it started. Soon, the community kept increasing and we moved to Facebook from WhatsApp.”

Gangjee said they have tried to include a lot of small-scale, home-based entrepreneurs and women-owned business to create financial inclusion of women.

Speaking about the challenges faced by her, Gangjee explained: “Consumers have a major trust issue as there are a lot of counterfeit products online.” Moreover, another hurdle is the use of mobile by women. “Around 10 million women have access to the internet and we need to increase that number.”

Additional hurdles include being a woman in a male-dominated society, she added. "Initially, many developers felt that as I'm a woman I would not know anything," she remarked. 

However, she added that now the business sphere is changing and becoming more accommodating towards female entrepreneurs.