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Financial Times 1st March 2006
Women tired of corporate life go it alone |
However, those who have done it warn that flexibility and control rarely mean a reduction in working hours, especially in wealth-creating businesses. "You'll double or triple the hours you put in," says Kavita Oberoi, 35, a self-confessed workaholic and mother of two who set up her IT consultancy in Derby after nine years as a medical representative at Bayer. "Because it's your business, you have to. People rely on you to deliver." Ms Oberoi cites control, reward and recognition as the big benefits of running her own business. She says she left her company job after being rejected for management on the grounds that she was "too competitive" to lead a team. Initially she went freelance, calculating she could replace her £35,000 salary by working just three to four days a month as a training consultant. In 2001, she set up Oberoi Consulting, realising there was a market opportunity in training doctors to use their clinical systems better to identify patients for screening and preventative treatment. This combined her pharmaceuticals experience with her interest in IT, which began when she learnt basic programming on a BBC computer as a child. Coming from a family of entrepreneurs, she says "it didn't feel at all risky" to strike out on her own, especially as she required no more start-up finance than the cost of a laptop and car. She persuaded Pfizer to be her first backer. The business has now provided training to more than one in five GP practices, has 16 employees and turnover that she expects to top £1m this year. |