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    ET Global Business Summit: Smriti Irani, Ritu Kumar, Ananya Birla bat for women’s economic empowerment

    Synopsis

    The designer spoke about what it takes to challenge the status quo.

    ET's tripane (78)Agencies
    (In pic from left: Smriti Irani, Ritu Kumar, Ananya Birla)
    With the world in transition, how does one disrupt the game? Some influential entrepreneurs shed light at the Economic Times Global Business Summit.

    At a time when data privacy and automation fears are rising and social sustainability is the need of the hour, how does one change the game? That was one of the key questions posed during the DisrupteX and Break-Out sessions at the ET Global Business Summit. Key personalities like Ritu Kumar, Ananya Birla, Vivek Gambhir and young guns like Haaziq Kazi and Aditya Pachpande shared their views on what it takes to challenge the status quo and make their mark.

    Why the ‘Better Half’

    The day kicked off with a ‘better half’ panel that saw women game-changers like textile minister Smriti Irani, POPxo founder Priyanka Gill and Sheroes founder Sairee Chahal discuss the position of women in a changing economy. Irani and women’s rights lawyer Flavia Agnes said that women could succeed if they are legally and economically empowered. Meanwhile, entrepreneur Ananya Birla mentioned that even though her microfinance venture lends only to women, that decision was not based on gender, but on data. “Women take loans for capital, not consumption. It just makes better business sense (to lend to them).”



    Overcoming adversity
    Some of the key DisrupteX sessions featured innovative tales of overcoming adversity by entrepreneurs like Indian mathematician Anand Kumar , founder , Super 30 (the program that trains 30 under-privileged students each year to crack the IIT-JEE exams), Haaziq Kazi (a 12-year-old entrepreneur who designed a ship to clean up the world’s oceans), Manu Kumar Jain (MD, Xiaomi India) and MasterChef Australia runner-up and celebrity chef Sarah Todd.

    “When my father left, my mother raised three children as a single mother. Despite working full time, she’d find time to prepare three course meals after working hard through the day. I got my first job at 14 and by the age of 18, I was working five jobs, and searching for my calling,” said Todd, sharing her journey to becoming a celebrity chef and the challenges of opening her own restaurant.

    Need of the hour

    Questions about purposeful leadership in a transitioning world, sustainability and using AIfintech to enable financial inclusion also dominated the day. At the infrastructure panel, industry experts like Kenichi Yokoyama (Asian Bank) and Ramesh Nair (JLL India) took note of regulatory issues that needed to be addressed for the sector to gain momentum. According to Nair, sectors like office rental, retail, student housing, data centres, co-working were growing at rapid rates. “The demand for affordable housing in India is humongous. It comes from population growth, aspirational requirements and the need for upward mobility,” he said. On the fintech panel, MobiKwik CEO Bipin Preet Singh spoke of how technology was enabling financial inclusion and addressed concerns of data privacy. “There is definitely a risk of algorithms going wrong and data being lost. It depends on companies, how they store their data,” he said.

    Despite working full time, my mother found time to prepare three course meals. I got my first job at 14 and by 18, I was working five jobs, and searching for my calling. There is definitely a risk of algorithms going wrong and data being lost. It depends on companies, how they store their data.

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