Life stories of Indian and South East Asian business leaders
I have written two life story books on Indian business leaders and one on South East Asian business leaders. The first is Added Value - the life stories of leading South East Asian business people published in 1999 by Murmeli , the second is Added Value - the life stories of Indian business leaders published in 2010 by Roli Books (https://rolibooks.com/) and the third is Profiles in Enterprise - inspiring stories of Indian business leaders published in 2015 also by Roli Books.
Many people these days like to listen to audio books, podcasts and interviews rather than, or in addition to, reading books, magazines or newspapers. There were so many inspiring and extraordinary stories told to me by the subjects of my books that I thought podcast fans might like to hear the best of them in this podcast - https://lifestoriesofindianandsoutheastasianbusinessleaders.buzzsprout.com.
Life stories of Indian and South East Asian business leaders
Ela Bhatt (1933 – 2022) founded the Self-Employed Women's Association of India (SEWA) in 1972. From humble beginnings it now has over 3.2 million members.
Ela Bhatt was an absolutely extraordinary women who passed away in 2022 at the age of 89. The Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA) she founded against strong opposition now has over 3.2 million members across 18 states in India. SEWA advances the rights of women workers in the informal economy such as those selling fruit and vegetables in the street. Not only did Ela have to fight long and hard to establish SEWA but that is not the only fight she had as it took many long years for her to persuade her parents to allow her to marry Ramesh Bhatt, the love of her life. As you will hear her long association with SEWA ended sadly but opened up another chapter in her long life.
As an indication of her global prominence in the area of the rights of women she was an inaugural member of the influential global problem solving group called The Elders (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elders_(organization)) which was founded in 2007 by Nelson Mandela along with other prominent members such as Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter, Graca Machel, Mary Robinson, Desmond Tutu, Muhammad Yunus, Li Zhaoxing, Lakhdar Brahimi and Aung San Suu Kyi.
My interview with Ela is contained within my book, "Profiles in Enterprise - inspiring stories of Indian business leaders" published by Roli books in 2015 ((https://rolibooks.com/).
Please note that these interviews took place some time ago - over 25 years ago in the case of the South East Asian life story book and around 10 to 15 years ago in the case of the two Indian life story books. However, their stories are correct to the time of the interviews and the objective is to demonstrate the entrepreneurial skills they exhibited at the time of the interviews in building their businesses.