This Mother’s Day, let’s celebrate the incredible women who are not only running businesses but also raising future leaders. Mompreneurs are a growing force, and their influence extends beyond the boardroom. They’re fostering a new generation of “studentpreneurs” – children equipped with the skills and mindset to thrive in the ever-evolving world.
Here’s a look at how Padma Koli, Director, Epistemo Vikas Leadership School, Aparna Acharekar, co-founder, coto, and Dr. Reema Nadig, Co-Founder and COO,KITES Senior Care, are raising their children with an entrepreneurial spirit.
PADMA KOLI, DIRECTOR, EPISTEMO VIKAS LEADERSHIP SCHOOL
(Her son Aryaman and daughter Sarayu are enrolled in BrightCHAMPS entrepreneurship classes in Hyderabad)
As an entrepreneur myself, the most important thing for me is to ensure that my son and daughter learn entrepreneurial skills like daily life skills, not something they learn in class once or twice every week. So in some ways, their training started even before they started formally learning entrepreneurship at BrightCHAMPS.
I remember this time when they were really young — we’d gone grocery shopping and my son remarked that the price of apples seemed to differ across supermarkets. And also that there were so many different price points for apples even within the store. This led me to give them the assignment of researching what was the cost and variety difference in a few stores.
The result of this exercise was that they immediately started understanding the relationship between price and demand in different locations, and also made correlations about income and price sensitivity. They also understood that beyond the actual cost of the apples, the price it was sold at would have to take into account the transportation, storage, real estate and staff cost of the market they were shopping at.
My objective for wanting them to be trained in entrepreneurship from an early age is not so they can learn ‘How’ to do a bunch of things — I think that can be learned even later. But to develop a mindset of ‘Why’. And I think that is best learned in childhood, when they are still exploring themselves and the world around them.
Another skill that I think is very important for them to learn is not belittling the people who disagree with them or who they think are wrong. I see this day in and day out in my own workplace — a big part of your success depends on being able to engage with dissent and conflict respectfully and without it eroding their sense of self.
Another one is resilience and problem-solving. I’m clubbing them together because you cannot be good at one without the other. There are so many situations in life and business when things will go wrong — sometimes because of someone else’s error, and many times because of your own.
Kids, especially now, with so much exposure and online documentation of their lives online, need to be taught the fortitude to not fall apart or hit the panic button at the first sign of trouble. When I was doing my executive MBA, my professors used to keep emphasising the need to be able to take calculated risks and have contingency plans in place before things went awry.
I keep giving my kids this example — if I have 100 employees today, and tomorrow a competitor suddenly opens a new business and offers jobs to 50 of them with higher pay, will I shut down my business? Will I fall apart and cry that my employees are doing what is in their best interest? Planning for future problems also requires resilience and a problem-solving mindset.
The reason I feel strongly about my kids being trained in these entrepreneurship skills from a young age is because I can tell you from experience that it is harder to learn them as adults or even by the time we go into business schools for MBAs.
A lot of entrepreneurship is about emotional strength, and I think no one is too young to learn to be emotionally strong. And it’s important to me that they get to practise these skills in big and small ways in their daily lives and interactions.
APARNA ACHAREKAR, CO-FOUNDER, COTO
“I believe that children of working mothers have an edge over others. They grow up more independent, responsible and are self-starters. A mompreneur’s child develops an entrepreneurial spirit early in their life. They are able to embrace change better, take risks, come up with creative solutions to problems as well as innovate. Whether it’s picking up business jargon in their vocabulary or learning about negotiations and financial management, the child develops an entrepreneurial aptitude being around the mother.”
DR. REEMA NADIG, CO-FOUNDER AND COO,KITES SENIOR CARE
“My greatest venture as a mother is not the business I am in, but the young minds I nurture. It’s about turning ‘What if?’ into ‘Why not?’ and watching them take their first steps towards building a better world. In every lesson I teach, whether it’s about the value of money, the importance of hard work, or the joy of creating something of your own, I am conscious of the fact that I am not just raising children—I am guiding future entrepreneurs.
As a mother, my role is to provide a safe space for them to explore their ideas, to encourage them to set goals and dream big, and to equip them with the skills they need to turn those dreams into reality. Remember, every great entrepreneur once had a mother who believed in their potential.”
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