From homemaker to entrepreneur

In 2008 when her husband passed away due to renal failure, her daughter and son were only 19 and 16. Even though a trained teacher, 47-year-old Anasuya Gupta had hardly worked for six months and belonging to a traditional Bengali family, was happy to be a homemaker raising her kids.

Suddenly the responsibility of managing a third generation family company, CICO Technologies, fell on her slender, untrained shoulders. “Typically in our family daughters or wives never joined the business. My brother-in-law had separated in 2000 and we were fighting legal battles over the brand. After his brother’s death, he immediately upped the legal cases to take over the company.”

The beleaguered woman didn’t even have the usual 11 day period to mourn; “on the 10th day I was sitting with lawyers.” On the other front were the 45 per cent stakeholders – banks and others – who also pressurised her to sell the company to a third party, saying as she didn’t have experience in running a company or training in finance, she wouldn’t be able to run the company.

“But I resisted all that. I wanted to hang on because I had the dream to carry this company forward to the fourth generation. But it was tough because the space we are in – manufacture of construction chemicals using technology – is a niche area, where there is a lot of MNC presence.”

Six years down the line, Anasuya, CICO’s CMD, is relaxed, composed and confident as she shares the platform with 150 women entrepreneurs from 15 countries at the Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network (DWEN) event held in Austin last fortnight. The confidence has come from taking CICO’s revenue from Rs 40 crore in 2008 to Rs 73 crore last year.

So how did she get the courage to take over a company which makes specialised chemicals, and has a big R&D component?

Passion, commitment

Many people helped her, says Anasuya, but the one who gave her a lot of confidence was a trainer from Bangalore. “I shared with him my worry that I had no technical or financial knowledge and he said an MD just needs to bring passion and commitment to the business… nothing else. That was a big source of strength and I followed his advice,” she smiles.

But much earlier, a very moving and motivating moment came when within a few months of her husband’s death she had to participate in the Vishwakarma pooja at their factory. After the puja, the worker put a tilak on her forehead, received the bakshis, touched her feet and said with folded hands: ‘Aap hamarey annadata hei. (You are our bread giver.) Remember that there is food in 200 homes in our villages because of you.’

“I just froze thinking I am responsible for 200 families. And there was the contract labour too.”

But she gave the business all she had, taking headlong all the challenges. The biggest one was the question mark on her ability to keep the business going.

“Tons of suitors came along, saying let’s have dinner or lunch and talk about what you want to do; what your plans are. Maybe we can work together. Translated… it simply meant: ‘Can can we buy you out?’ I’d say let me think about it. I was sure I wouldn’t do it because the CICO brand is from pre-independent India. Our ad was on The Statesman’s front page on Aug 15, 1947, and we still have some clients from undivided India.”

The other challenge was on the finance front. Had the bankers said “you are a novice and we don’t have faith in you, I’d have respected that. But they played around, found technical reasons and backed out.”

The other cultural issue was that as a widow, she found herself suddenly dropped by everybody. “Invitations to social events stopped coming, but I didn’t care. The exciting thing was that I learnt something new everyday. Today we have bought out all our investors,” she grins.

Future plans

Now in a comfortable and secure position, Anasuya is looking at expansion and is open to a JV, particularly on the technology front.

To the question on whether women do business differently, she, like many others at DWEN, says she is not looking at “great exponential growth because to me my value system is important. We have a value document with principles including integrity, family values and gender diversity.”

CICO Technologies is now exporting to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, and has done some sales to Kenya and Mauritius and is now looking to export to Africa.”

Both her children – the daughter is now at a B School in France– and son, are keen to join the business. “They are proud of the CICO family; for me it was an accident… a compulsion. For them it is choice!”

(The writer was in Austin on an invitation from Dell)

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