Words of Wisdom from 2012’s Top Female Entrepreneurs in Emerging Markets

 

23 January 2013 by Rania Anderson

The NextWomen Business Magazine

 Africa Theme.

Further dispelling myths and misconceptions about the achievements and participation of women in economies of emerging markets,this free, 22 page, visual eBook,Success Speaks, published by The Way Women Work compiles career and business advice from women entrepreneurs and upcoming professionals from developing and emerging economies across the globe, including Africa..

Some of the profiled women have already achieved great success and are named among the Top 10 Power Women in Russian, the Arab 100 Most Powerful Women, Top 25 Indian Women Achieves, and among Fortune’s 100 Most Powerful Women. Others are early and upcoming in their careers. They range in age and industry and position.

What they have in common with you is that they are all striving for increased success and impact. We know you will be inspired by their words of wisdom no matter where you are in your professional or entrepreneurial journey!

For your free copy register on our website

Here’s a sample of the remarkable women that you will find in the ebook. 

From Africa 

Njeri Rionge is entrepreneur, a seasoned corporate director, and Executive Director at Africa Ignite Consulting and Investing Ltd. In Kenya. Nijeri launched a business incubator to nurture and encourage entrepreneurship in Kenya known as the Business Lounge and the ‘Chief Techpreneur’ at Insite Limited, a company that helps businesses harness the power of online technology. Previously she founded East Africa’s first mass market oriented ISP, Wananchi Online (a Swahili word meaning citizen) which made Internet connectivity affordable for the average household for the first time. Njeri grew the business from a typical start-up to become the largest ISP in East Africa.

Harriet Ng’ok is an Entrepreneur Consultant with Sinapis Group – a Private Equity in Nairobi, Kenya with a focus on African Start-ups. Harriet is involved in a variety of economic and financial consulting with small/medium sized firms and government.

From Central America

Celeste North, from Mexico, founded NuFlick, a site for on-demand alternative and indie films focused on the Latin American market. For the past three years she has produced a podcast on entrepreneurship and innovation at Emprende.la, a site she created with two friends to be a resource for tech. She is also a regular contributor at Opinno, a global network of innovation centers. She writes on topics such as startups in Latin American, women entrepreneurs, challenges and trends in entrepreneurship, and more.

Estefany Marte , General Manager of A.M. Frutas y Vegetales SRL in the Dominican Republic.  Estefany is helping to change Santo Domingo’s fresh fruit landscape by the way she runs her company. She was selected to participate in the U.S. Department of State’s Women’s Entrepreneurship in the Americas (WEAmericas) Initiative and was specifically mentioned by name by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a speech about the impact of women entrepreneurs.

From India

Lynn de Souza is Chairman and CEO of Lintas Media Group in India, one of India’s largest media agencies. Lynn was named in India Today’s list of top 25 women achievers and is a marketing and advertising dynamo with decades of experience and leadership.

Yeshasvini Ramaswamy, a certified psychometric analyst, is the Founder and Managing Director of e2e People Practices, an Indian leadership audit firm that helps companies achieve business-people alignment. Among the many other awards and recognition she has received, the United States of America State Department, nominated Ms. Yeshasvini to represent India in the prestigious 2012 Fortune Most Powerful Women Program.

From the Middle East

Dr. Manar Al Moneef is Managing Director Imagination Breakthrough at Middle East at GE in Saudi Arabia. Dr. Moneef is at heart, an artist who has a Ph.D., in Molecular Oncology and Genetics. Prior to joining GE, Dr. Moneef attended Harvard Business School and was the Director General of Health Care & Life Sciences at Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA).

Tamara Abdel-Jaber is the founder and CEO of her company, Palma, a fast growing business and technology consulting firm. Palma has  22 full-time employees and 150 contractors across the Middle East. In 2011, Arabian Business Magazine named her one of the 100 Most Powerful Arab Women, and her company, Palma, was recognized as one of the 30 fastest-growing companies in Jordan. 

From Russia

Lyubov Simonova is a Principal at Almaz Capital Partners, a major international technology venture capital firm in Russia with a wide range of investments including in women-led businesses. She was recently named one of the Top Ten Power Women in Russia by The NextWomen magazine. Her professional background includes a role as head of business and strategy development at a private equity firm and at an Internet company.

Taisiya Kudashkina is CEO and C0-Founder of tulp.ru in Russia, the leading Russian reviews site. Tulp is the Russian yelp: a way to share the information about the best local businesses. Tulp has over a 170K reviews and is continuing to grow.

Rania Habiby Anderson is the President and Founder of The Way Women Work, an entrepreneur, executive business coach and an angel investor. Throughout her professional life, Rania has been observing, researching, connecting with and guiding the way women work.  As a leading authority on business women in developing and emerging markets Rania works with business women globally and established The Way Women Work as career and business advice site for women in developing and emerging markets. Rania is also the co-founder of the Women’s Capital Connection, the 8th women’s angel network in the United States and an equity investor in women-owned businesses.

 

German Companies Look Far Beyond Ailing Euro Zone

By NINA KOEPPEN, The Wall Street Journal

Perrot GmbH & Co. KG

A 7.5-ton hour hand is installed on a Perrot clock on a skyscraper in Mecca in 2010.

CALW, Germany—Perrot GmbH & Co. has been making bell-tower clocks for 150 years, but the order from Saudi Arabia was on a new scale: a 140-foot-diameter clock, installed at a height of more than 1,300 feet, in the heart of the holy city of Mecca.

The family-owned company from the Black Forest is building its exports beyond its traditional European base, expanding ties with fast-growing developing countries. The geographical shift is happening at many of Germany’s 270,000 manufacturing companies, which are gaining customers in the emerging economies of Asia and Latin America and reducing their dependence on the shrinking euro-zone economy.

German firms are increasing the amount of business they conduct with emerging economies at the expense of European countries. Dow Jones’s Nina Koeppen explains why companies like car-maker Volkswagen have led the push into new markets. Photo: Perrot GmbH & Co.

Perrot’s oversize dial for Mecca Royal Clock Tower Hotel—the world’s second-tallest skyscraper, after the Burj Khalifa in Dubai—is visible from more than five miles away. But the project “has made us visible all across the Arab world and beyond,” said Johannes Perrot, who runs Perrot together with his two brothers.

For German industry, “the trend of unlocking new markets will continue, given rapid economic growth and solid capital investment in emerging markets,” said Ilja Nothnagel, a foreign-trade adviser at the German Chambers of Commerce and Industry in Berlin.

Blue-chip companies such as car maker Volkswagen AG VOW3.XE +0.29% have led the hunt for markets beyond Europe. But a growing number of small and midsize German companies, especially those operating in niche markets, are decoupling from Europe too.

“If we relied on the euro zone only, the company would be on a less-stable footing,” said Stefan Klebert, chief executive of Schuler AG, SCUN.XE +0.54% a maker of specialist presses for coins, automotive parts and other metal products.

Perrot GmbH & Co. KG Perrot’s oversize clock for the Mecca Royal Clock Tower Hotel in Saudi Arabia has a 7.5-ton hand, installed in 2010.

German companies’ reputation for quality engineering, a sought-after mix of specialized equipment and high-end goods, and years of effort to boost competitiveness are making German goods popular in fast-growing developing countries. The so-called BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India and China—are expected to power global economic growth next year, while the euro-zone economy is forecast to contract again in 2013. German exports to the BRIC countries have increased almost sevenfold since 1996, totaling €121.2 billion ($156.7 billion) in 2011.

“We are currently observing a continental drift in global economics,” said Ralph Wiechers, the chief economist at Germany’s VDMA engineering federation, which represents about 3,100 midsize companies. “German engineering companies by now sell three times as much to the BRIC countries than to the periphery states of the euro zone—or Italy, Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Greece,” he said.

Sabine Herold, a managing partner at DELO Industrial Adhesives,FUL +0.95% said her company is drawn to the growth potential of markets in China and Southeast Asia. “We supply special adhesives for electronic and microelectronic industries, and they are foremost in Asia,” she said. DELO, which is based in Windach, Germany, near Munich, employs about 300 people.

German exports for this year through October rose 4.8% from a year earlier, boosted by 11% growth in exports to countries outside the European Union, according to data published Monday by Germany’s official statistics office. In contrast, exports to the euro zone fell 1.2%.

As Europe’s biggest economy becomes less dependent on its traditional markets in the euro zone, some Germans are even beginning to question whether Europe matters as much to Germany as it used to. Some euro-skeptic commentators such as the author and former Bundesbank director Thilo Sarrazin argue that Germany’s future interests lie beyond Europe.

Most German companies say European markets are still a major part of their business. France is expected to stay Germany’s biggest trading partner in the next few years. But growth, increasingly, is coming from elsewhere. China is likely to replace France as the top destination for German exports by 2030, according to a recent report on the global trade outlook by economists at HSBC HSBA.LN -0.28% .

The euro zone’s share of total German exports fell to 37.6% in the first three months of this year, compared with 51.6% in 1991, according to Germany’s statistics office.

“Future growth will be mostly outside the euro zone,” said Mr. Klebert, the CEO at press maker Schuler. “Therefore, Asia—particularly China—the U.S. and Brazil are key markets for us,” he added. Schuler today generates about one-third of its sales in Asia, compared with just 5% in 2000.

Schuler, whose business also supplies presses for the production of aerosol cans, is counting on the huge potential of China’s consumer market. “With a population of 1.3 billion people, there’s expanding demand in China for hair spray and deodorant—that’s where we come in,” Mr. Klebert said.

Perrot also operates with much broader reach now. Over five generations the Perrot family has gone from making clocks for village churches in the Black Forest, to equipping spires in Switzerland and other European countries, to supplying far-flung global markets.

Being from Calw, a stronghold of the devout Christian Pietist movement, helped Perrot win the confidence of its Muslim customers, Mr. Perrot said. “We are very organized here. Our workshop is clean and tidy and there aren’t any pinup girls on the walls. That’s what our customers respect,” he said.

Perrot has recently supplied large clocks for cathedrals in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Brazil’s São Paulo state, as well as hotels, train stations and public buildings around the world. The company is aiming to break into the Chinese market next. It is already the unlikely export champion of the small town of Calw, previously known mainly for being the birthplace of Nobel-laureate novelist Hermann Hesse, who was an apprentice mechanic at Perrot.

As well as developing countries, the U.S. is again becoming a source of growth as its economy recovers. German exports to the U.S. rose 21% in the first three quarters of this year compared with the same period a year earlier.

Germany’s exports have been growing faster than the country’s overall economy since the early 1990s, a trend that economists expect to continue for many years. The country has become increasingly dependent on foreign customers. Exports of goods accounted for 41% of German gross domestic product in 2011, compared with 30% in 2001 and 22% in 1991, according to data from the statistics office.