Can do attitude

She was the first woman President of the American Alumni Association, served as a member of the Censor board and had a long stint with the National Consumer Redressal Commission as a member judge, but the entrepreneur in Rajyalaxmi Rao's family has always been her husband Vijay. A brilliant scientist, we hear he had designed and made India's first hovercraft during his IIT days which had caught the attention of the then President of India.

Ever since her stint with the NCRC ended recently, Vijalaxmi has been working on a private project that's quite innovative - a miniature pepper spray that is small enough to be packed out of sight in a blouse but potent enough to knock a dozen men out of action. Apparently the experiment was inspired by the Nirbhaya episode and she was distributing it free to friends and women's group but of late there's been such a sharp increase in requests for the deadly little deterrent that she's seriously contemplating of mass commercial production. "There is a cost associated with it and while I'm more than happy distributing it, how do you deal with requests for hundreds of thousands?" That's why they say that every problem is actually an opportunity in disguise.