Sangeeta Banerjee — Co-Founder, ApartmentADDA
A techie at heart and an entrepreneur with an innate understanding of sales, Sangeeta Banerjee co-founded ApartmentADDA with a vision of creating smarter neighbourhoods in India. ApartmentADDA is an online software for managing apartment complexes (www.apartmentadda.com). ApartmentADDA serves the neighbourhood in two significant ways — by enabling the residents to discover and engage with their neighbourhood and by enabling the association / society to administrate and lead their neighbourhood.
Sangeeta is responsible for its overall strategy, product positioning, customer outreach and business expansion and is propelling the company towards becoming India’s largest neighbourhood network. 10,000+ Apartment Complexes are already hosted on ApartmentADDA. The company is funded by eminent angel investors in India and Silicon Valley, including Sharad Sharma (Founder of iSPIRT, ex-CEO of NASSCOM products, ex-CEO of Yahoo India R&D) and Bhupen Sharma, a Silicon Valley based Investor and Co-founder of Sling Media.
Her professional journey started off with TCS where she immersed herself in process and automation thinking, then went on to consult on ERP with Capgemini in the USA after her MBA, and later worked with SAP, again in the US. Sangeeta holds an MBA degree in Finance and Information Systems from Louisiana State University, USA and a BE in Electrical and Electronics from College of Engineering, Guindy (CEG).
She loves gardening and treading lightly on this planet (read minimising the carbon footprint!). She prefers cycling or using public transport to work. She says that they maintain a minimal-plastic office and extensively use the Compost Wet Garbage in the balcony. She is also interested in the amazing possibilities that Design Thinking brings to the table.
High point in career
“During the bootstrapped days of ApartmentADDA, taking the first ApartmentADDA paid flight to meet an ADDA customer! The flight cost was paid by the revenue earned by my own company. All my salaried life I have taken a lot of business flights and always imagined how it would be if the flight ticket was purchased using revenue that my own company generated. When it really came true, it was an unbelievable feeling…”
Most challenging assignment so far
“Meeting and understanding Venture Capitalists. It took me a good amount of time to get in their shoes and understand their interest – their drivers and goals. Unless I understood this bit completely, the salesperson in me couldn’t do justice to the pitch!”
Greatest inspiration
“In Business, I am inspired by the memory of my Father who was highly determined and a person that exemplified the ‘Can-Do-Anything’ attitude.”
Most important milestone in life
“Finding my soul mate. The sense of balance as well as adventure that Venkat (my Co-founder and CTO, ApartmentADDA and who is also my life partner), brings to our personal and professional lives is indeed a blessing.”
Women are the better halves. What does it mean?
“Apart from justifying the institution of marriage I think it means when you divide a cake always give the better half to the woman J. On a serious note, I think women bring in a lot more diverse thinking and perspectives to the table, making them more empathetic and natural multi-taskers, be it at home or in business.”