They moved to Sweden along with their husbands, who were employed in a company in Stockholm, around ten years back. Both Mekha Mohan, 39, of Edathua in Alappuzha and Darshana Narayanan, 39, of Vaikom in Kottayam never expected that Sweden would change their life forever. Though they could find a job in Sweden as IT professionals, they decided to pursue their dream of becoming entrepreneurs and started their own firm in 2014.
The two now run IT consulting companies –Cubane and Netonyx– in Sweden offering services to top clients including automotive major Volvo. From a humble beginning as a startup, the companies have now grown with a turnover of Rs 30 crore, expanding operations to Denmark, Finland and Norway. Today, they manage a team of recruiters and sales professionals based in multiple locations.
Their commitment and hard work bore results when the two companies withstood the pandemic induced slowdown and reaped rich by opening a subsidiary in India with a vision to bridge growing shortage of niche IT consultants in Europe.
“India has a lot of talents in IT. We introduced the concept of remote working in Sweden through which companies could make use of these talented human resources,” said Mekha, who did her Masters in Computer Science after her graduation in Physics.
“I worked in the IT sector for a decade in multiple MNCs while I was in India. I moved to Stockholm along with my family hoping to continue my career here. However, after reaching Stockholm, I followed my calling to be an entrepreneur. After weeks of struggle, we finally got our first contract and never looked back since then,” said Mekha who in her spare time enjoys travelling, gardening and spending quality time with her family.
Darshana, who had done her computer engineering, also found the new task enterprising and started to work with Mekha to set up the company. “We noticed that there was a space for a professionally managed consulting firm in Sweden. This prompted us to start the company,” said Darshana.
However, the two had to face a lot of hurdles in the beginning. “Language was the biggest challenge. We had to learn Swedish first because the residents only spoke Swedish. We took it up as a challenge. Initially, it was hard to convince the clients as they weren’t ready to trust us. We had to put in a lot of effort in the initial days to overcome the resistance,” said Mekha.
“We have helped a lot of professionals from India to migrate to Sweden and integrate with Nordic culture,” said Darshana. The two women are also into various cultural spheres in Sweden. Mekha is the cultural secretary of Swedish Kerala Association.
Be First to Comment