By Priti Shah, CEO at Payswiff Solutions (former Paynear Solutions)

 

Women are taking more and more interest in the tech domains today. Genetically women are very strong on certain domains where men too are – but that doesn’t mean dominance. We have women in top positions in the top banks in India today. Though the boardroom presence of women globally was 6% in 2006 it is 14.6% now.

 

At 41, I changed domains in my profession that were essentially disparate. From travel to foraying into fin tech was an adventurous and challenging shift. Starting my career as a lecturer of travel and tourism at SNDT University, I went on to become a travel consultant at Highland Tours and later a business partner at CD Tours and Travels. Later I entered the world of online payment services in 2005 when I joined EBS (E-Billing Solutions) and grew to become President, E-commerce.

 

Depending largely on the strength of EBS’s success and enticed by the idea of my own entrepreneurial venture, I co-founded Paynear Solutions in 2013. Today, I will am going to share my views on why change in professional fields is important for women.

 

Change is the only constant

 

Change is a very important aspect of growing. Though it’s very tough one has to be out of the comfort zone to take big leaps in life be it personal or professional. If you keep on doing the same thing you keep on getting the same results, it’s just simple as that. Your ability to accept change is proportionate to your aspirations and dreams, higher the aspirations bigger the change.

 

 

For me change from a core travel professional and a travel professor to payments was adventurous and challenging both. Computers and cards both were Greek to me. When I started in payment space as an Assistant Manager I never knew how to configure a chat or email id and it was difficult to be a part when you have all the geeks around you.

 

 

There is no age for starting anew

 

 

You don’t need to know everything to start something. You just need to know something. I believe there is neither age nor time to learn new things and there is no wrong time to do right things. I never had a credit or debit card till I spent around a year when I started. I learnt from the scratch on the payment business but because of the will to learn and determination to change, it made it happen. And getting the right people to make you learn was also a blessing for me. Be it my husband, colleague or my boss they all helped and encouraged in learning about this space. Knowledge is in abundance and is no one’s property; it depends on what is your bandwidth to do so.

 

 

Learning, courage and knowledge is gender agnostic

 

 

Trying and failing is more courageous than not trying what you want to. As a gender, you may be intimidated, discouraged, underestimated, not asked for opinions but learning, courage and knowledge is genderless. It’s tough to succeed in a world where it’s a male dominated society but the world is changing, the world needs more leaders, more innovation irrespective of the gender. We need to make the change happen.

 

 

There any special skills for women to make it big in the industry. Common skills like patience, leadership, innovation, common sense, and most important learning – if you have these then you can make big anywhere. Any domain is about logics, opportunities and knowledge – it does not matter what the gender is as long as the fitment is right.