The Forum, a network to help the growing community of highly innovative successful female business owners of South Asian origin, hosted its second luncheon on Thursday 21st November 2013 as part of celebrating Global Entrepreneurship Week. Hosted by Nina Amin, Tax Partner at KPMG at their headquarters in London, guest speaker was Nina Wadia, one of the most recognizable Asian faces on UK media who spoke about her journey from being a theatre actress to TV soap star as part of the BBC series ‘Eastenders’ and now as a film producer. Nina described the success of BBC Radio 4 show ‘Goodness Gracious Me’ which later turned into a global phenomenon when filmed for BBC TV; spoke about her roles in TV shows including Dr Who, Skins, Waking the Dead, New Tricks and The Vicar of Dibley before her most successful role as Zaynab Masood in BBC ‘Eastenders’ and finally her first film as an Executive Producer ‘Four’ which was heralded a success and is being distributed internationally.
The Forum was set up to provide a platform for like-minded South Asian women to get together on a regular basis to share ideas on growing their businesses. It was formed jointly by Anuradha Banerjee of Barclays Wealth and Investment Management, Jagdeep Rai of Barclays Corporate together with Nina Amin of KPMG. The lunch was attended by 25 entrepreneurs including Vin Murria of Advanced Computer Software Group; Lopa Patel MBE, Founder & CEO of Redhotcurry.com; Reena Ranger, co-founder of Women Empowered; Rupinder Virdee of Revolution Creative Agency, Abida Ghafoor, CEO of Arc Management Consulting, Janhavi Dadarkar of Dadarkar Consultancy, Madhu Rajesh of the British Asian Trust, Radhika Chadwick of Resonant Strategy, Sharmila Green of 90 Degree Angle, Radhika Hirjani, Director of Aftershock Plc, Vaishali Shah of Minerva Trust, Sheena Bhattessa of Its PR and Warsha Kale of BLP Law among others.