Working in big corporate houses can be tough. Ask women who chose a career in the IT sector. Bosses often demand long working hours and constant travelling in the IT-ITeS sector, which largely caters to international clients. This can partially be the reason why some daring women chose to be entrepreneurs rather than employees. Whether it be opening BPOs, product development or IT-training schools, there are women entrepreneurs who are trendsetters in the male-dominated $78-billion IT industry.

Take the case of Sangeeta Patni who started Extensio Software, a technology-building company. She did not want to work for an IT company as an employee and generate revenues for others. With Extensio, I am the decision maker, she says proudly. Patni spent 15 years working as an employee in various IT companies before she started Extensio.

Sangeeta Gupta, VP at Nasscom gives her perspective, Today, with innovative ideas, there is a lot of scope for women to start their own companies in the IT-ITeS space. There are many women entrepreneurs who have started small product companies and IT-training companies in the recent past. And the number of such women will only increase in the future.

An examples of such a training company is Global Talent Track, which was founded in 2009 by Uma Ganesh. She is a former CEO of Zee Interactive Learning Systems, where she was instrumental in pioneering several IT-led learning initiatives, which included setting up 300 learning centres to train over 25,000 IT professionals at a time.

Then there are women who want to do something for the social upliftment of the society. An inspiring example is Saloni Malhotra, an engineer from the University of Pune, who currently spearheads a rural BPO DesiCrew, which she co-founded in Jan 2005. She started her career in an interactive media Web Chutney in Delhi. Today, Desicrew BPO has 250 employees and five centres across Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.