To encounter reverse sexism in all its untrammeled glory you will have to travel to Siruseri, 25 kilometres from Chennai. One day in March, I did. Siruseri was once a sleepy village on the road to seaside-town Mahabalipuram. Today, few take that road to the seaside temple-town; a high-speed expressway, The East Coast Road connects Chennai to Mahabalipuram. Siruseri, however, has emerged the epicentre of the infotech industry in Tamil Nadu. Xansa, TCS, and a clutch of other companies have already put down roots here. The village lies at one end of Tamil Nadu's most happening it cluster, the Taramani-Siruseri cyber corridor. The other end, Chennai-borough Taramani boasts Tidel Park, a 1.28 million square feet hi-tech facility built by a state government agency.

The road to Siruseri isn't great, but I derive consolation by repeatedly reminding myself that things will soon change for the better. The Tamil Nadu government recently approved the construction of an IT Expressway from Taramani to Siruseri, and then on to Mahabalipuram (the entire project will cost around Rs 130 crore). My destination, however, isn't the IT Park. It is the Golden Jubilee Biotech Park for Women. That doesn't have the same cadence as The Kalahari Typing School for Men; then, this is fact, not fiction.

Thirty five minutes from Chennai, the air is noticeably fresher. The main building with its dome-shaped entrance, and the large sheds housing the 17 units that have set up shop here look clean and spacious. They also look new.

Although the idea of a biotech park for women was first floated in a 1996 seminar in Chennai involving scientists from the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, United Nation Development Programme (UNDP), and United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), it wasn't until mid-2001 that the park really opened for business (the 'official' date of opening was November 2000). And it did so with one entrepreneur who had signed on just a month earlier.

This was Jayasree Sathyanarayana, who, at 31 years of age, remains the youngest entrepreneur in the park. Sathyanarayana had spent some time at CavinKare, the company that engendered the sachet revolution in shampoos, as its head of research.

Today, her company Dream Finders manufactures a range of herbal cosmetics that are popular with some hotel chains and in Singapore and Malaysia, boasts its own foot-care product targeted at diabetics, and had worked on assignments for Big Pharma including some for Dr. Reddy's Laboratories. Others followed. Circa 2004, the park is almost full up: 17 of the 20 sheds are occupied, and nine out of 10 acres, allotted. All to women who, in turn, employ mostly women.

The Spirit Of Entrepreneurism

In another life, Dr Sucharita Kumar was a banker. In 1997, when she heard of the park, she was so enthused that she quit her job and signed on for the entrepreneur development training that was on offer. However, she soon realised that the park was no place to grow orchids-the weather just wouldn't allow for this-and decided to help other women become entrepreneurs.

Today, as CEO of Golden Jubilee Biotech Park, she is the first stop for women entrepreneurs considering putting up a unit at the park. It is her job to gauge how serious the women who approach her are, assess each for that entrepreneurial spark, and help chosen ones with managerial inputs.

Most women who approach her are homemakers wishing to diversify into entrepreneurship, and Kumar has her own way of assessing their capabilities: she visits their homes to understand their skills as homemakers and talks to the spouse and the children. If what she sees and hears tells her that the individual possesses some managerial capability, she gives her go-ahead, and an entrepreneur is born.

When Kumar met Sabitha Muralidharan, a tentative applicant for a unit in the park, she was convinced of the lady's managerial abilities. A visit to Muralidharan's house reinforced her conviction. ''Her kitchen looked like a R&D facility,'' recollects Kumar. Muralidharan herself wasn't so sure. True, she was a great cook, and a stint as a consultant to a processed foods company-she got to see the insides of a ready-to-eat foods factory for the first time-gave her some much-needed confidence, but running your own show is an entirely different ballgame. The park, and Kumar, were willing to wait. In Marc 2004, Muralidharan became the latest entrant to the Golden Jubilee Biotech Park For Women.

There are other stories like Muralidharan's and Satyanarayana's, some about ventures in pure biotech, others in areas such as processed foods and ready-to-eat foods that can be classified as biotech companies only if the definition of biotech is stretched and stretched and stretched. Still, all ventures in the park are run by women-Kumar says she could have filled the park faster had she relaxed this criterion-and that's saying something

S. Sankaralakshmi and husband R. Sivasubramanian-Kumar encourages ventures that has couples working together, although she takes care to ensure that the wife isn't a sleeping partner whose task is restricted to ensuring entry into the park-run Dorven Agro-Eco Bioventures, a food processing venture and dream of a day when they can go national, with Dorven centres across the country run by professionals (preferably women, adds the couple).

S. Bhama runs Elbitec Innovations, a company that manufactures microbial biocontrollers, bio-protectors and bio-pesticides, key inputs to the growing organic foods trade (organic foods can be grown using only organic inputs, which Elbitec's products are).

And then, there are established companies such as MV Diabetes Hospital and Paris Dakner Microspherules that have established a presence in the park, the former through a research facility that aims to work on indigenous diagnostic methods that can be patented and on speciality foods for diabetics, and the latter through a manufacturing unit that will produce biotech drugs.

Encouraged by its success, Golden Jubilee Biotech Park is now embarking on Phase 2, a food park. And unlike Phase 1, which was funded by a Rs 4 crore grant from the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, the park is now looking to raise debt to fund its activities. After all, investments of some Rs 20 crore are expected to flow into the park in the next few months. Enough reason to make a song and dance about International Women's Day, March 8, and Sathyanarayana promises that will indeed be the case in 2005. The women were much too caught up with their work this year.