How next-gen women entrepreneurs are scaling up with innovative businesses ideas

Predictable perceptions may decree that metals is definitely not the perfect industry for a woman to work. However Saloni Mardia Kothari, 26, who is founder at Mtlexs Research, has barely trailed the straight path ever since she joined her family’s three-decade-old business of manufacturing & trading in casting industry in August 2013.

She was fast in scrapping out many out-dated habits of businesses, like not having digital records and going to see each buyer repetitively for taking orders, along with injecting technology & infusing proficiency in the workplace. Even as her staff wondered how long the 23-year-old’s efforts at “training us how to do business” would last.

The profession that crippled by slow production, delayed payments, inconsistent quality & was once shapeless, began to flourish with signs of enhancement. Which marked as a clue for Saloni to launch Mtlexs Research, India’s first online B2B market for exclusively non-ferrous metals. She has done her master’s from the London School of Economics, and is a chartered accountant. Right from info about non-ferrous metals to their rates & availability, everything went online. Statistics about local & international prices, import & export data, tenders, projects & technical specifications were also added further. “We started matchmaking among buyers & sellers as per the products they deal in,” she says.

How does it feel to make over the family business? Kothari said, the idea was to expand the family business by opening an entity that is a one-stop solution for everything associated with non-ferrous metals.

Breaking & innovating traditional obstacles to take the family professional to the next level, with innovative business ideas is something that second-generation industrialists are well placed to do, she counts. And even better if the second generation happens to be a woman.