Founder and CEO, HerKey (formerly JobsForHer) | Founded 2015 | Bengaluru
A Mumbai student who had to repeat Class 12
Neha Bagaria was born and raised in Mumbai and was often top of her class, The Weekend Leader reported in 2023. She won a place at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania to study finance and business. Getting there was not simple. YourStory reported in 2015 that her Indian board qualifications were not recognised, so she had to repeat her Class 12 courses before beginning her undergraduate degree.
Her first business came out of that same world of exams and admissions. In her last semester at college, she founded Paragon, which brought the American Advanced Placement programme to high school students in India. At 21 she was the College Board’s representative for India, teaching students only about five years younger than herself. She ran Paragon from Mumbai, but later closed it. She told YourStory she did not have a strong enough team to cover for her when she was away.
Bengaluru, and a family business
After she married, she moved to Bengaluru and joined Kemwell, her husband’s family’s pharmaceutical manufacturing business. Over five years she worked across marketing strategy, HR, finance, information systems and performance reviews, Open magazine and YourStory reported. It was broad, hands-on work inside a growing company.
Forty days that became three and a half years
In 2009 she was expecting her first child. She worked until the ninth month of her pregnancy and planned to take 40 days of maternity leave, Open magazine reported in 2018. Instead, she did not go back to work for three and a half years.
The pull of home was strong. “I was a full-time mother who didn’t want to leave her children with a nanny,” she told Open. Her second son was born about three years after the first. “After my second child, I found it extremely challenging to restart my career,” she told The Weekend Leader.
What finally moved her, YourStory reported, was a question from a classmate at a college reunion. She realised that “the kids could be raised perfectly well alongside maintaining a career.” In 2013, when her second son was six months old, she went back to Kemwell.
From one woman’s story to a number
Going back made her look at the problem more widely. Open magazine reported that she found nearly half of India’s female workforce stops working after three years. That added up to about 10 million graduate and postgraduate women on a career break at any time, because of young children, ageing parents or marriage. Most found it hard to rejoin a company or retrain after time away.
“50 percent of all working women in India drop out of the workforce in 3 years,” she told BW Disrupt in 2017. She also spoke to large companies. YourStory reported that they said they would consider hiring women back after a break, but did not know where to find them.
That gap, between companies that wanted experienced women and women who wanted to return, became her business.
Launch day on a terrace
She launched JobsForHer in 2015, around International Women’s Day. Open magazine dates it to Women’s Day itself, and The Weekend Leader to 5 March. The tagline was “Ready | Set | Restart.”
The first team was six women, Bagaria included, working from a restaurant-cum-workspace on Church Street in Bengaluru, Open reported. She learned digital marketing and website building from scratch. She also brought in three consultants, in HR, technology and finance, to help her build something that could scale.
Even the launch did not go to plan. The Weekend Leader reported that the internet failed at the Church Street workspace and then at a Starbucks. “So I took my car and went to the terrace of my home,” she said, and launched from there.
The model was simple. Companies listed jobs, and women searched and applied for free. She argued that returning women were an asset to employers. “Women getting back to work come with all sorts of benefits,” she told YourStory in 2015, pointing to their experience and the fact that they had no notice period to serve.
Bootstrapped growth
JobsForHer grew without outside money for years. The Weekend Leader reported that it was self-funded until 2022. By 2015 the site was getting close to 2,000 clicks a day.
By 2018, Open magazine reported, it had a team of about 50 and worked with more than 4,500 companies. The site drew more than 300,000 visitors a month, and its social media reached up to 5 million people a month. It had built a 500-member mentorship board and 300 partner organisations to help women retrain. Its offline event, RestartHer, drew close to 10,000 people across three cities in September 2018.
BW Disrupt shared one result in 2017. Uma Maheshwari, a former HDFC Bank assistant vice-president with 18 years’ experience, returned after a five-year break. She found a job at Kotak Mahindra Bank through JobsForHer within three days, and went on to head the bank’s second-largest branch in Karnataka. The biggest obstacle for returning women, she said, was “a loss of confidence that it is possible for them to restart their careers.”
JobsForHer becomes HerKey
In 2023 the company renamed itself HerKey, widening its focus from restarting careers to every stage of a woman’s working life. In April 2023, after years of self-funding, it raised $4 million (about ₹32 crore) from Kalaari Capital and 360 ONE Asset. Angel investors included Zia Mody, Puneet Dalmia and Ranjan Pai, YourStory reported. At the time it served 3.5 million women and more than 10,000 companies, and said it planned to reach 30 million women.
The Weekend Leader reported in June 2023 that HerKey had a turnover of ₹8.87 crore and a team of more than 100, mostly women. Its clients include Amazon, Accenture, Capgemini, Myntra, Dell and PwC.
Where HerKey stands now
In February 2026, at the India AI Impact Summit, HerKey launched Simkey, an AI coach to help women with career and life decisions, from coming back after a break to dealing with burnout and moving into leadership. “Most AI tools are built to respond. Simkey is built to reflect,” Bagaria said.
HerKey says it has connected more than 5 million women with opportunities at over 20,000 companies, and offers more than 200,000 expert-led learning resources. Its goal remains 30 million women.
It started with 40 days of planned leave that stretched to three and a half years, and with her decision to find out how many other women were in the same place.
Founder Journeys is a Sakhi Sangini series telling the stories of women who built businesses in India. This story is based on public interviews and reporting.
Cover photo: supplied to Sakhi Sangini.
Sources: Open magazine (2018); YourStory (August 2015; April 2023); The Weekend Leader (June 2023); BW Disrupt (March 2017); Women World Media (February 2026); HerKey, About us.
