The youth in the employable segment of current Indian demography may find it difficult to believe that it is easier to land up into a corporate job such as the consulting in the Big Four, or being a techie in the software giants like Infosys, TCS, IBM and the likes or probably the core engineering firms or the organized banking sector companies just after the graduation or MBAs but extremely difficult to make an exit from this.
The cushion of the fixed monthly salary coupled with some decent incentives, the comforts of the organized work environment and almost fixed career progression graphs act like drugs when it comes to leaving these comforts for venturing into uncertainties of small scale businesses in any and every field, especially when you are a woman.
Such were the thoughts that plagued the mind of MANIPRIYA KONAR, a small town girl, born and brought up in Burdwan, West Bengal, when she was faced with a choice of running back to her safe heavens of any banking company, when Covid first struck the Indian lands around 2020 just one year after the birth of her first child. With three years of experience at the mid-segment level at ICICI bank from 2015 – 18, after completing MBA from NSHM, Kolkata campus that seemed to be a natural choice.
“At times most dangerous choices are disguised as the most natural ones by the mind as the fundamental nature of human mind is to proclaim certainty and circumvent the risks associated with the challenges in the novelty.” Konar says that this one learning from her life changed the course of her life from a monotonous repetitive office job to venturing into a niche business of export of heavy machinery equipments of mining sector from India to Africa.
Apart from being a graduate, Konar was also well versed with Company secretary law, which she cleared in 2012, which she complemented with an MBA degree from NSHM, Kolkata in 2014. Yet Manipriya Konar only had an experience of the banking sector for 3 years, all of which was apparently absolutely unrelated to the field of export of a small scale unit in the niche sector of heavy machinery equipments, the seed of which was implanted in her mind after her child birth in 2019. Covid period proved to be a blessing in disguise for Manipriya during the restrictions of which she completely focused on her child and laying the foundational plan, in a chronological manner, of her small scale export unit, which included not only the technical know-how of the machinery but end-to-end knowledge of the supply chain of an export consignment from India to abroad.
It may not be out of place to mention here that export rules and regulations coupled with extremely complex procedures which involve multiple stakeholders such as seller – buyer documentations apart from the customs, shipping lines and international banking segment, is itself a stringent domain even for established businesses. Taking it a step further, export of heavy equipment machinery adds to the complexity of the general export procedures due to the immense technical functionalities of such complex machinery which cannot be transported in general containers of 20 and 40 feet but needs open spaces for loading and unloading.
Konar responds with respect to her inhibitions as to being a woman and venturing in the export business of the complicated domain of niche heavy equipment machinery, “Woman is bestowed with the magical power to create another conscious life. While I looked at my son sleeping beside me during the times of Covid, I thanked the magical god to have bestowed me with this shakti to bring another consciousness to this planet. Nothing can be more fundamentally challenging and complex than to be a mother – not even starting any company in any field. With this utmost faith, coupled with efforts into research and planning, I finally set up my small scale company in 2022 in kolkata.”
Four years down the line since the founding of TEKNYX GLOBAL, Manipriya Konar has emerged as very few self-made Bengali woman, especially on the soils of Kolkata, which is known for harboring and furthering limited and exclusive Marwari business families and therefore, has transformed herself into a source of living inspiration for Bengali community and in particular the women in general.
Follow-on: https://www.instagram.com/manipriyakonar?igsh=MXdyY2FsOXVueWh6eQ==