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 After completing her Masters in Economics, entrepreneur and Co-Founder of Panacea Infotech, Smita Ghai initially started her career as a freelance web designer in the year 2002. Smita always aimed to be an entrepreneur as it gave her the freedom to work along with its unique set of challenges. She did a number of projects for local and international clients before starting her firm in 2004. She had a very humble beginning as she decided to bootstrap the business instead of taking finance from her family or banks.
Smita started her office in a small one-bed room apartment on NIBM Road, Pune, with one employee and slowly moved to a commercial office space in 2005 with 15 employees. Today she runs her office from Magarpatta City, employing more than 100 employees! She says persistence, hard work and an eye for quality is the key to her success.
Smita applied for the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women Scholarship Programme with the Indian School of Business (ISB) in 2011. The Scholarship Programme's classroom sessions in marketing, finance, communication skills and mentoring along with business plan creation helped her to better visualize the future growth for her business. She says that her Mentor helped her to see the existing business problems with a different perspective and forge out a creative and practical solution. She believes that to be the best, you always have to learn of what is new in the industry. To maintain a balance between work and home is always challenging for any women entrepreneur, but with constant support from her husband, she has always done well at both fronts.
Smita encourages entrepreneurship in her organisation and till now three of her employees have successfully created their own ventures. She works closely with start-ups and SMEs to provide them with business solutions right from inception of the idea to building a MVP to developing a full-scale product.
Looking back at her journey she feels proud to head an organisation having clients around the globe. She has worked out alliances and partnerships in the US, Australia, Kuwait and UAE. She also advices entrepreneurs and mentors them.
To know more about her firm, please check out http://www.panaceatek.com/
For her future endeavours, all the best to you Smita!
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