Vanitha Mohan (Pricol)
- Meet Vanitha Mohan, an entrepreneur who runs Pricol, a 2000-crore-rupee company. She is also the founder of Siruthuli, a volunteer organisation that concentrates on making Coimbatore a clean city.
- Vanitha Mohan was not the founder of Pricol. The company was founded by Vanitha’s life partner, Vijay Mohan. Vanitha’s leadership had enormously contributed to the growth that the company witnessed after 2000. Her style of management and strong leadership principles are Pricol’s foremost investments.
- In a way, Pricol set an example for other companies in Tamil Nadu. The gender gap is still a major issue. But Pricol took a step to lessen that gender gap. Vanitha reserved 25% of the jobs in Pricol for women. This step has helped hundreds of women live a financially independent life.
- “Siruthuli” means ‘a small drop’. The name may mean a small drop, but the impact it makes is indescribably huge. Today, if you look up any initiative that works on the environmental preservation in Coimbatore, it would either be an initiative of Siruthuli, or an initiative that was started in collaboration with Siruthuli. This shows Siruthuli’s contribution in making Coimbatore a better place to live. Siruthuli has done a lot for Coimbatore, but the most noteworthy of them would be the cleaning up of the river Noyyal and reviving the river’s riches! This is an act that hundreds of future generations would thank her for.
- Beyond the services rendered via Siruthuli, Vanitha’s words as an environment enthusiast holds great significance. She has voiced against several issues such as boring the earth to criminally insane depths for the sake of borewells, depletion of riverbeds caused by smuggling of river sand, and littering the river. At an event, she spoke, “Coimbatore has dug 5 lakh borewells in the past few years. If this is the figure for just Coimbatore, imagine the figure for the entire Tamil Nadu!” By sharing this alarming data with the public, she gained more cooperation for her initiatives.
- Her looks may convey a hard-to-crack and tough personality, but there are not many people who are as compassionate as she is. Her leadership style is also spun around the core concept of compassion.
- Coimbatore is a land of industries. In this land of industries, Vanitha was the first woman to chair India’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Coimbatore. In a country where opportunities are withheld merely because of gender and misogyny, Vanitha’s progress is an important milestone in social justice.
- “Do not lose hope in your company just because of a few failures. First identify the root cause of such failure, and work toward rectifying it. Then the efficacy and victory of your business model will come to light.” – these are Vanitha’s words of motivation for budding entrepreneurs.
- Vanitha believes that the ability to do good things is the real freedom. That is, if one dreams to do a good deed, they should be able to create a conducive atmosphere to nurture and develop that dream. That is the definition of real freedom.