At BrilliantRead Media, we always strive to bring meaningful and powerful stories from India and around the world to empower and motivate our growing community. As part of this endeavour, we invited Meenal Jagdale for an exclusive interview with us. She is an Entrepreneur and Political Consultant. Meenal is the Co-Founder of Codemo Technology Solutions. Let’s learn more about her incredible journey, her background, and her advice for our growing community!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Meenal:
We are aware of your contribution to the ecosystem, talk us through your background and your journey as a women entrepreneur, please;
I’m from Maharastra, born and brought up in Mumbai. I did my chemical engineering form Mumbai University. Passed out in 2006. While I was in college, I was very much passionate about the social causes of our society. Although I was in the engineering field, but I always thought that I would like to do something in the socio-political sector.
Initially, I started working in my domain which is in a Chemical Engineering in an MNC for a couple of years. But I was not enjoying what I was doing, I gave a lot of thought and then I moved to the development sector. I got an opportunity to work with a couple of NGOs at the grassroots where I worked on causes such as sustainable livelihood in the tribal region, unorganised labour problems and livelihood opportunities in the Ladakh and Kashmir region.
“That helped me a lot to gather insights on what are the real problems mainly in rural parts of our country. What are the problems faced by citizens and how are they being resolved right now. This experience gave me a lot of learning about grassroots. I realized while working in the social sector is that the political and government platform is where one can contribute in the mass scale impact.”
Luckily, I got an opportunity to work with a member of parliament ‘Supriya Sule’ and I joined her team in 2010 and also worked as her Executive Assistant. It was a great learning experience working with her because I got exposure and an understanding of governance and the political system. I got to know more about policy-making, elections, political parties and their internal systems etc.
I would like to highlight, I understood that there is a scope for a professional approach in India’s political and government system. Later, I applied at the ‘Indian Political Action Committee’ and got an opportunity to work with the renowned political strategist of India Mr Prashant Kishor. As an Executive Council member at IPAC, I worked in 7 different states of India on election campaigns with different political parties. It was a turning point in my professional career where I learned about large-scale election campaigns and operations revolving around it.
The major observation during election campaigning was many domains in India have been revolutionized by technology, like fintech, agritech, food industry but political domain was still far away. Every domain or industry is using new technology mediums to solve the problem statement and increase operational efficiency for both the consumers as well as for the industry owners. But that was not the case in political and governance domain.
If you see in India, the political domain, in general, is very much disconnected from the people. They have lost their faith and trust in political leaders. That’s when me and Codemo’s other co-founder, an alumni of IIT Kanpur also Ex-Ipac (Data and Analytics head) ‘Mr Subhash Chand Tanan’ both of us thought that there is a lot of scope for this domain in India.
Then we came up with an idea that we need to do something where we can bridge the gap between the common people and the political leaders of our country with the help of technology and make it more efficient. That’s how we came up with the idea and started ‘Codemo Technology Solutions’.
What attracts you towards entrepreneurship instead of a corporate career?
I always wanted to build something on my own because that gives you more freedom and opportunity for innovation. You also get an opportunity to contribute to some sort of problem which is currently present in the society. So that was always my idea that I will put some years of my career into learning and gathering professional skills and after that, at some point, I will start something on my own.
I left corporate and started entrepreneurship, I also studied social entrepreneurship from the ‘Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies’ for two years. My idea was not only commercial entrepreneurship but a meaningful contribution to our society.
‘Codemo Technology Solutions’ is such a unique name; talk us through more about it, please. Our audience would also love to know what kind of problem you are solving?
Everyone is aware of the fact that India is the biggest democracy in the world, with more than 130 cr population. But as I said earlier, there is a huge disconnect between political and government platforms or leaders with the common people.
If someone wants to raise a basic issue from his/her area like a street light is functioning, water problem, electricity problem or any governance-oriented issue they cannot directly approach the leaders and get it solved at the earliest. But the system is designed in such a way that those are the people who are going to solve all these kinds of problems.
Also, on the other side political leaders are not very much aware of people’s needs or their opinions. The reason is, whatever feedback they get from their party people is most of the time very biased which increases the disconnect worse. There is a strong need for third-party feedback.
Our idea was to connect people with political leaders or government with the help of technology. As all these stakeholders are part of our democracy, “Connecting democracy” was our idea.
Connecting Democracy gave us the name which is Connecting – CO and from Democracy – DEMO. That’s how the CODEMO name arrived. It was our co-founder Subhash’s idea. Currently, we are offering various tech services in the political and government domain such as web/app developments, electoral surveys, government schemes surveys etc. etc. We also help our clients to design customized Politech and Govtech solutions according to their needs.
Who do you believe has been the biggest source of motivation in your daily life?
Motivation is very subjective. I won’t say that one particular person or a thing would be the motivation in my life. There are multiple people like my family and friends and my cute pet Rana. They are my daily life partners. When I switch off from my work, I spend a lot of time with them and it is rejuvenating.
Another point, I like to travel, I’m a very environment enthusiast, I go on to nature treks, wildlife safaris quite often also, do gardening. These are another source of motivation for me. Working with my colleague Subhash and our talented team members also keeps me motivated.
What are the three most important lessons you have learned in your life?
> Always be open to exploring new things
> Do a lot of research before you start a new thing
> Most importantly always be grounded and grateful for what you have
What are some of the strategies that you believe have helped you grow as a person?
First of all, I would like to say, there are no strategies to grow as a person. You just grow as a person through your experiences and from the people around you.
For me, I am fortunate enough to travel to almost every part of our country in the last 10 years. From working in Ladakh and Kashmir in harsh weather conditions to working in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
Travelling for me is more like reading books. Travelling is the main thing which helped me grow as a person because I have met a lot of people from different cultures and ethnicity. Avoiding settling in my comfort zone and readiness for exploring new things and facing challenges is my motto always.
In your opinion what are the keys to success?
According to me, success’s definition is different for everyone, but in entrepreneurship:
– Believe in your idea
– Be focused
– You have to be consistent
– You need to have clarity, about what you want to do?
– Keep your attitude Positive attitude and trust yourself
What advice would you give students and young professionals who want to have a successful career?
If you want to get into entrepreneurship. The first thing you should do after your education is to build one or two core skills in the field you are passionate about. Don’t expect money or commercial benefits for first few years, commit yourself that you need to be an expert in your industry. You need to become a master of something.
Once you have done it then you can start your journey towards entrepreneurship. Then you can build something on your own. You might fail in the initial stages but just have patience and faith in yourself and keep going. Focus, consistency and have clarity are the key factors.
BrilliantRead is committed to bringing stories from the startup ecosystem, stories that reshape our perspective, add value to our community and be a constant source of motivation not just for our community but also for the whole ecosystem of entrepreneurs and aspiring individuals.
Note: If you have a similar story to share with our audience and would like to be featured on our online magazine, then please write to us at [email protected], we will review your story and extend an invitation to feature if it is worth publishing.
