The striving deeds by Sheena Kattimani are sky-high in giving women the ‘Wings of leadership’ in the manufacturing shop floors. Achieving 25% of the workforce as women by the time, Sheena of Inovit Solutions envisions hiring more women at her shopfloor, amplifying women’s voices in manufacturing industries.
It all started when young Sheena from God’s own country Muvattupuzha, Ernakulam District, Kerala to Bengaluru for completing her higher education. She started her career in the manufacturing industry by taking her first job at Klassic Tools, a small-scale unit based out of Electronic City, Bengaluru. After getting married to Ramakrishna Kattimani, Sheena moved to Thailand where she donned the role of a homemaker, but destiny chose different challenges and roles in her life.
Hail to her managerial excellence and her husband’s technical expertise which bestowed Indian Manufacturing and a flagship ‘Womanufacturer,’ Sheena who made around 80 percent of her organization’s administration a fleet of skilled women workforce. “With small children to look after and business to bring forward, the major challenges were delivering timely results, getting high-end machines and lack of strong customer base,” told Sheena Kattimani on challenges faced on the way.
With her unwavering thought process, she has overcome them and now, is the figurehead of inspiring women in manufacturing. She is currently serving as one of two Directors of Inovit Solutions, headquartered in Bangalore, who supplies the aerospace components to global industrial majors like HAL SAFRON HAL, Mahindra Aerospace, Aequs Echo System, and Tata Advanced System.
The Transiting mindset
After pursuing her Masters in Finance, she started her initial journey with an MSME with the shackling challenges as faced usually being a fresher. After marriage, she went to Thailand with her husband as a homemaker but returned with the mindset of creating jobs rather than securing them, the mindset which became a conviction when she saw women working in a significant ratio at the shopfloors of Thailand.
Back in the year 2012, after facing lots of ups and downs and looking all around for a platform to showcase her talent as an employee, she decided to create a platform and start from zero, which is not only providing employment opportunities but being headed by a woman, it is also inspiring women to be an integral part of manufacturing industries.
With Sheena’s mighty determination, the company Inovit Solutions which started from one employee has grown to a 10 years old leading manufacturer and supplier of Precision Parts for Aero Engines and Sub-assemblies, Complex Tooling, fixtures Assemblies for Automotive, Aerospace, and General Engineering.
Seeking best out of Self
Sheena Kattimani was neither having a business background nor had any mentor. Still, somehow, she managed to set up the very first machine in the year 2014 at her shopfloor, which upgraded Inovit’s production standard and helped to get a strong customer base. The company now has 13 machines on the shop floor.
“Although we hadn’t any strong financial base, I never preferred to seek help from others. Instead, I always seek to make the best out of what I had,” she narrates. During the initial phase, 95 percent of the company’s revenue was invested back in the shopfloor, which helped Sheena to gain competency lying on the foundation stone of self-reliance. The forewoman of Inovit found it crucial to have self-dependency and make her way, rather than choosing something on someone’s judgment.
Spill the value ‘SHE’ adds
Sheena’s role has been inspiring for the women to be open up about their own choices regarding the operations. The benchmark of women's leadership opines that every woman should openly express the value she adds towards the success of the manufacturing operations.
With her efficient management skills which are crucial to business, she is proactively making the women aware of the SOPs at her shopfloor, which makes them high-yielding operational talent. Also, she believes in making friendly connections with them rather than a call on by a boss, which makes communication transparent.
Sheena revealed that out of 65 employees at her shopfloor, 15 are women. Also, Inovit’s women occupy around 50 percent of the candidates hired for operations regarding quality checks. With the higher production in the nearby future, she is foreseeing hiring more women as her conviction of making the women better resonate in the manufacturing operations.
Remarking on the policies, Sheena says, “Society needs equality. Allocating fifty percent room to women will inspire and motive more women to find every industrial sector as an optimistic career prospect.” Taking judgments as disappointing and demotivating, Sheena always makes her own way and inspires other women serving the manufacturing to do so.
“It is not luck or fortune, it is the Education, which is the unbeatable tool and the greatest wealth for a woman. I always encourage women to acquire knowledge, dare, and dream, through which they can imbibe richer prospects of manufacturing excellence,” concludes Sheena Kattimani.
