Most people who come back from a master’s degree abroad want a corner office. Neha Shirole came back to a rented factory space, two machine operators, and a pile of unfulfilled orders. Her first salary was Rs 5,000 a month, set by her father, raised only when he decided she had earned it. She cold-called strangers, wrote her own quotations, and structured a company from the ground up. She never left. Her name is Neha Shirole Jethmalani, Director of Natasha Fin Tubes Pvt Ltd, and this is her story.
Natasha Fin Tubes Pvt Ltd, based in Pune, manufactures precision fin tubes used in heat exchangers, chillers, condensers, and cooling systems across industries including pharmaceuticals, power plants, petroleum refineries, food processing, and natural gas processing. The company exports to over ten countries, works across ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, and serves more than 1,000 customers. Its roots go back to 1997 when it was founded by Ravindra Shirole to develop a high-precision tube for a BHEL nuclear power R&D application. That one project became the foundation of a company.
Thirteen years into running it, Neha Shirole Jethmalani is the one who shows up at OEM meetings, sits across a table of four or five technical people from R&D, purchase, and sourcing, and solves their problems. Alone.
The Phone Call She Was Not Expecting
Neha grew up around business. Her father, Ravindra Shirole, founded his first company, Shirole Fabrications (earlier Neha Steel Works), in 1982. Then Viraj Engineers and Exporters in 1994 (after his youngest child), which manufactures undercarriage track chain parts for over twenty OEMs in the US and Canada. Then Natasha Fin Tubes in 1997, after his second child. He named each company after one of his children. Neha is his eldest.
She grew up visiting the factory during school vacations, helping with ISO documentation, understanding what the product was and where it went. The company was not unfamiliar territory. But running it was never the plan.
She did her engineering in Electronics and Telecom, went to the UK for a master’s in Wireless Communication and Engineering Management, and came back in early 2012 planning to rest for a few months before taking up a corporate role. Orange (a leading telecommunications provider in Europe) had already made her an offer.
Then a key person at Natasha Fin Tubes, the one running sales, operations, and almost the entire organisation, left overnight.
“My father called me one day. I was sitting at home and he told me, there is something you need to look into and I need your help. Come to the office.”
She went. What she saw when she got there was not just a management gap. It was a company in a very difficult state, with outstanding orders to fulfil, almost no staff, two machine operators, one accountant doing attendance on physical cards, and a rented factory space. She took it personally.
“I didn’t think what would be next or how long I would be here. I was just thinking of the present situation. There were a couple of orders from public sector units that had to be fulfilled. There was literally no one to look into it apart from two operators.”
She did not plan to stay. But, she stayed for thirteen years and counting.
She Started at Rs 5,000 and Earned Every Rupee After That
Coming in as the owner’s daughter could have meant stepping straight into authority. Neha went the other way entirely.
“I knew I had to earn a place for myself where I am not respected because of whose daughter I am, but because of who I am.”
She started from the most junior position she could. Cold calls. Quotations. Follow-ups. Then she moved to structuring the organisation, setting up departments, defining roles. Then HR, working closely with mentors she found through her industry network. Then quality. Then operations. She gave herself at least two years in each function before moving on.
Her father set her salary at Rs 5,000 and raised it only when he decided she had earned it. She did not ask for more. She stayed with her parents, so the number was not the point. The discipline was.
Today, the most senior people in the organisation report to her with respect, and she knows exactly why.
“They know I came ground up. I have in-and-out knowledge of every department because I structured each one myself. There isn’t a single department of this organisation that has not gone through me.”
They Thought She Was the Admin
The experience of being a woman on the sales side of a manufacturing business in India has a particular texture to it, and Neha is specific about what that felt like in the early years.
“Whenever they heard a woman on the phone, they would think it was admin or front desk. Technical? They would hesitate. Then when I started talking technically with them, they would slowly start giving me more details about the requirement. That went on for two to three years.”
She admitted that she found it annoying, not crushing. She is from a technical background and had no intention of being mistaken for someone who was not. She pushed through it by knowing her subject better than the people on the other side of the conversation.
It took time, but it turned. Today, when customers from across India or from export markets think of Natasha Fin Tubes, they think of her. They come to exhibitions specifically to meet her. They tell her sales team they want to close deals with her personally. She has built a name so specific to the company that the two are nearly synonymous.
“Unless you make yourself technically sound in your subject, you will not be respected. Not by employees, not by customers. If I sit there and start talking without knowing my subject deeply, no one will take me seriously. My customers today know that I know the product better than them. That is why they respect me.”
The Man She Learned Everything From
Ravindra Shirole, Neha’s father, is the kind of engineer who cannot sit idle. On Sundays at home, he finds something to fix. He has now taken a step back from day-to-day operations, but when a challenging development project comes in, he is the first to get involved. The team is glad when he does.
Neha absorbed a great deal from watching him, and she is specific about what she learned.
“I was very aggressive when I was young. Impatient. I wanted fast decisions, fast results. He was the one who paced me down. He would take 48, 72 hours to think through a situation from every possible angle before deciding. That is how I have started to do things now, instead of reacting.”
She used to sit in on his meetings, not speaking, just watching. How he handled suppliers. How he kept relationships with customers when something went wrong. How he stayed calm in situations that had no obvious answer. These things, she says, cannot come from a book or a university.
She carries his quote by Ratan Tata as the principle she leads by:
“Leadership is not about being in charge. It is about taking care of those in your charge.”
Her Mother, the Chairman of the House
Behind the business is a family where everyone is in business. Neha, her father, her sister, her brother, all working across the group’s different companies, all coming home to the same dining table. Her mother, Suhasini Ravindra Shirole, is the one who holds the balance.
The family calls her the chairman of the house.
Suhasini is also a director in all three of the family’s companies. But her more critical role, in Neha’s telling, is what she makes possible at home. When Neha travels for work, her son is with her mother. When Neha comes home from a long day, she does not have to split her attention. Her mother is the reason she can give work everything it needs without her son missing out.
“Without her, I would not be working so freely. She has taken responsibility for ensuring my son grows up in a safe, good environment. And whenever I am not in the right mindset, I go and talk to her. She says something so casually and I just feel normal again.”
Neha is matter-of-fact about what it means to be a working mother and a company director at the same time. In the morning when her son leaves for school and she for work, she gets in the car and becomes the director. At home she is the mother. She has responsibilities toward her husband, her in-laws, her parents. She wears multiple hats, she says, and she does not think of that as a burden. She thinks of it as what women do.
Privilege Gets You to the Door, Nothing More
There is a question Neha has been asked, implicitly or explicitly, for thirteen years: did she get where she is because of her father? Her answer is careful and honest.
“We were lucky to be given a platform. We did not have to start from scratch. And because of that, I feel more responsible, not less. It was built by him. It is my moral responsibility to take it to a level that he feels proud of.”
She does not resent the question. She answers it by pointing to what came after the entry point. The cold calls. The two years in each department. The sleepless nights before big bids. The times she wanted to give up when a team failed a critical delivery. The slow, patient accumulation of technical knowledge until she knew the product better than the customers buying it.
The privilege was the door. Everything else was work.
What She Tells Women Who Are Still Standing at the Door
Neha has one message for women who are considering manufacturing, a business, or any role that feels big or uncertain or not quite meant for them.
“It just takes that one leap to get there. Once you are there, you will know your potential, because unless you dive into a situation, you will never know what you are capable of. I know it needs courage. But once you take that step, there is absolutely no looking back.”
She took that leap in 2012, sitting at home after coming back from the UK, when her father called and asked for help. She answered a phone call. She stayed thirteen years. She built a company that now exports to ten-plus countries, where the shop floor workers can tell you the mission and vision unprompted, and where customers from across India come to exhibitions specifically to meet her.
The Orange offer letter is still in a drawer somewhere. She has never needed it.
