Matriarchs Make their Mark on Family Businesses

Most would associate Fortes Holdings, a diversified group with interests in education, property development and health and fitness, with Sanjay Mankani – and before that his father, Shyam Mankani. But the lesser-known story behind this Dubai-based Indian family business is the women who have been running the company’s early years education venture for the past 35 years. “What makes us quite different is that we’re a female-led family business – but with the full support of the men,” says Sanjay Mankani’s mother, Shakuntala Mankani, 75, who founded Jumeirah International Nurseries (Jins) in an Al Wasl villa in 1981. Together with her daughter Veena Vaswani, now 50, the mother-daughter team founded a branch of Jins next to Al Safa Park in 2000. Today Veena is married to Ashok Vaswani, the chief executive of Barclays UK and lives in the United Kingdom – but she is still involved in Jins at an operational level. And the story of the matriarchal nursery business doesn’t stop there.