From Electrical Engineer to Entrepreneurship, the story of success of Mumbai Bengali Woman Nabanipa Chatterjee
Entrepreneurship was never in her dreams, being a business woman was never in her wish list, yet today she is a successful business woman, Managing Director of “Search Engine Ranking System Consultants Pvt Ltd”. It’s my pleasure to present the story of Mrs Nabanipa Chatterjee, my school friend from Kolkata, presently residing in Mumbai , a successful woman entrepreneur, a caring mother, loving companion, a responsible daughter and daughter in law.
With a bright academic record in her school and college days, she completed Electrical Engineering from Jadavpur Engineering College in 1995 and joined
Philips India Limited. After that there were a number of changes in job as well as changes in cities . Sometimes it was change in city that compelled her to change job and sometimes it was the job that compelled her to change the city. From Philips she moved to Infosys , Bhubaneswar in 1998. In the year 1999 she got married and moved back to Kolkata and joined R S software. As her husband was transferred to Mumbai, she once again changed her job , joined Patni Computers in Mumbai in 2001. During that time the best thing happened in her life , she gave birth to a boy child in 2003 and her life changed. She found it extremely difficult to bring up her child as a full time working mother , without any elders who can guide or support her at home. She and her husband planned to move to Kolkata, their home town and they were lucky enough that on request her husband got a transfer and moved back to Kolkata once again in 2004. She joined hands with her brother who some time back had started a business and was on the verge of expansion, looking out for new options. From then on started her journey as entrepreneur.
Since then Nabanipa Chatterjee is the Managing Director of ” Search Engine Ranking System Consultants Private Limited, ” the Company having its headquarters at Kolkata. The Company operates in the IT enabled services. It works with a Company in Dubai to manage few B2C web sites related to pets that provide helpful, free tips to pet owners on different aspects of training, handling and caring for pets. In addition, these web sites also sell various ebooks, a membership site, and a recurring continuity program that cover advanced topics regarding pet ownership and training.
The Company has been profitable since its inception presently having 15 full – time employees including software developers, content managers and accountants. In addition there are about 15 part-time consultants working globally from locations ranging from US to Philippines in the fields of advertisement and handling customer support services .
By end of 2005, she was back to Mumbai again, but that one and half year that she spend in Kolkata, helped her to learn how to manage business from remote. Moreover she says her work experience in Infosys helps her a lot in the technical field. Talking about the future plans she says, ” both my brother and I prefer the location flexibility that our business gives us. This is why even though we keep expanding the reach of the business, we don’t aim for expanding it to an extent where the location and time flexibility gets jeopardised. So our expansions will follow those lines. ”
Nabanipa says that it is not only bcoz of change in cities or change in job, her main reason to change her status to an entrepreneur is to get flexibility. She says “added advantage in the type of work I do, is I can work from home, rather I can work from anywhere globally, I can spend time and be with my child whenever he needs me.” She wanted to give her son , a life that we were accustomed in our childhood , that is we used to get our mother to talk or share whenever we needed them. She adds ” working from home is not at all easy, that way you are never free; though you get flexibility of time, quantum of work or working hours has no limit. In all these 15 years of working from home, the
biggest traits of managing work from home successfully are – being self motivated and extremely disciplined with your time. You don’t have a boss to supervise it to report to everyday…so you have to be particular of how you will schedule your personal responsibilities or social commitments such that your job gets done, no matter what.”
When asked what she loves to do in her me time, she smiled and replied, ” truly speaking I do not have any me time, ” whenever she can manage some time out of her busy schedule or may be in the weekend she spends time with her family, she is fitness freak and loves walking a lot in weekends in addition to her regular schedule of workouts.
On asking , how and where she sees herself after five year, she replied ” 10 years back I was not sure that I will be in this position today, nor I dream of anything in particular for future but of course I am hopeful , and definitely I want my son ( who is in 11th Std now), to go to a good college and finally get settled, I want to do all those things which I could not do in all these years, and I have already started learning to play keyboard for the last few months, so that I can move on with my passion whenever I have some me time.” May her success continue and her wish list gets fulfilled.
Article written by : Debjani Basu Mullick
