MPW 2022: How Meena Ganesh is growing Portea Medical

Ranging from winning multi-million dollar deals to not being able to pay the salaries of her employees, Meena Ganesh has seen her fair share of ups and downs. Ganesh was enjoying a successful corporate career when she decided to enter the world of business. With the experience of mentoring various start-ups behind her, she is now busy growing Portea Medical, a home healthcare firm as its Co-founder and Chairperson. 

“When I started Portea, it was a challenge to get the support of established healthcare players. But it has stabilised over time,” she says. Not only that, one of her co-promoted start-ups, bigbasket, was acquired by the Tata group in 2021. Ganesh—who currently sits on the boards of Procter & Gamble, Pfizer and Axis Bank, along with being a co-promoter in nearly a dozen start-ups—brings a lot of domain knowledge to the table. For instance, as member of the Acquisition, Divestment and Merger Committee on Axis’s board, she has been instrumental in guiding the bank through recent deals. 

“I have been actively involved in the acquisition of Citibank India’s retail business,” she says. On the matter of encouraging entrepreneurship among women, Ganesh says that the need of the hour is for women entrepreneurs to step up and follow what they are passionate about without thinking that it is a domain only for men.