During a casual conversation the idea of creating a women only business network took root. On a purely experimental basis Nidhi & Aastha decided to start with a few friends for a monthly meetup. The only criteria was each participating members had to be a brand owner or entrepreneur.
It was only apt that Business Mates Delhi was launched on Women's Day!
Carefully selected venues, training sessions, guest lectures, ideas exchange, mini exhibitions followed by lunch used to be the itinerary. It was all decided amongst the members and this format continues till date. We were having such good time that we realised that we need to take it further into a professional setup.
The first success story of Business Mates Delhi is the brand Roopvedaa by one of our founding members, Roopa Gupta. She joined Business Mates with the sole intention of starting a brand of handmade skin care products. She had the technical knowhow but wanted to learn entrepreneurship from other brand owners. Within six months she gained enough confidence that she was able to launch her brand commercially. The story of Roopa Gupta is intricately linked with that of Business Mates. Both a success story and still going strong.
We met with so much of success in six months that we realised that it is now time to take things to the next level.
We created a complete and professional online presence. Members received folders and welcome kits.
We also tinkered with the program and dress code to make it a completely formal event.
There are no words to describe how everyone was affected by Corona Virus pandemic. As brand owners many of us saw our years of efforts go away in a blink. People staying home and economy virtually in a shutdown mode and with a future not sure.
Strong that we are being women, we decided to use the situation to the best of our advantage. We decided to go online. As women we always shy from technology. But we all embraced it and now began the learning and understanding of how to make the online and social media platforms work for us.
Our FB live sessions went viral with tons of views.
Covid never gave us time to settle because of the waves. But once govt restrictions were gradually eased, we took a call to hold our first offline meetup on the 2nd Anniversary of our launch.
It was symbolic to say that now we are going to resume fully.