Ask for equal responsibilities and give your best to fulfill it, never ask for gender equality. Be self-dependent and confident. Be yourself there is no need to compare with men’s out there. As a woman, you have your fragrance don’t lose it in doing a comparison with men. Don’t hesitate to do anything, keep the faith that you can do anything. There is no need to prove or show out just get self-satisfaction.
-Kirtida Dave
Ms. Kirtida Dave was born in Patan, the education hub of Northern Gujarat to Mr. Virendra.H.Dave, a retired railway employee, and Mrs. Alka.V.Dave. Being extremely good at mathematics and physics, she has a natural proclivity towards the Engineering field. Based on her merit she got into Instrumentation & Control Engineering at Saurashtra University, Rajkot. At a later stage during her Bachelor’s, she did realize the potential in this field and was inspired to go more into automation.
After her Bachelor’s she went on to work as a GET at Jyoti CNC Automation and since then she has been a part of the organization. Driven by a vision to build the company into “A Temple of Technology” Jyoti was established in 1989 and today it is one of the largest multinational organizations. Since inception, the company has grown manifold from manufacturing gearboxes for machines to developing precision all-geared head lathe machines. Later on, Jyoti rightly identified a shift from conventional machines to highly sophisticated CNC machines. Jyoti was the first company to manufacture CNC machines in Gujarat.
Her professional life at Jyoti has been quite rewarding for both the company and herself. But the road was never an easy one, as everyone is well aware of the fact that in manufacturing or in design field specifically electrical/mechanical branch there are always very less female staff compared to male, under such circumstances she had to work with the workshop people. They were very blunt in nature, but she didn’t find any difficulties because of her past experience of working on 2-3 projects herself where she had strengthened herself to sustain such an atmosphere. Being a strong woman she did increase her bandwidth to work with the rough speaking people on the shop floor. As time passed she learned how to get the work done from them, how to tackle any harsh or messed up situations. She recalls, “Sometimes I had to stick to my decision, sometimes I had to look at their approach.”
As we all know every great achiever is inspired by a great mentor, Kirtida also had found a great mentor in the Head of her Department to guide her and be with her morally during all ups and downs of the life. He was a person with whom she could discuss, share her ideas, troubles, and whenever the need arose always had a way to deal with any situations.
With her hard work and the will to excel in a field traditionally dominated by men, she did achieve great heights and now leads the Electrical Design Team and looks after the Electrical Cabinet Design and integration of these systems with other functions such as Mechanical Design etc. for all models of Jyoti CNC Machine. She is also responsible for any quality improvement for Electrical Design. Other than these she takes care of the development of her team members and is involved in cultural improvement tools like 5s, Quality Circle, Quality Group etc. One of her colleagues Mr. Vipul Nair says, “She is very simple, down to earth and helpful”. “She is very supportive to her teammates if they are stuck anywhere in their job. She is extremely friendly to everyone in the company and hard working to achieve her goals and she always motivates her fellow team members to get abetter output in work.” He adds.
Her professional life was never limited by the boundaries of our nation.When in 2007 Jyoti purchased Huron Graffenstaden, a French CNC high-precision machine manufacturer in an all-cash deal, she was one of the persons to be sent to Huron from India and since then often she often visits the Strasbourg headquartered Huron Graffenstaden. She points out that during her visits she observed that the workers there are very dedicated for their work, devoting themselves fully to work during the working hours and after working hours give their time to their families, personal life, give time for themselves. She points out that they are very clear for their values, keen in quality; never compromise on anything whether it is life, work, product, anything and the ratio of women to men is twice that of Jyoti.
She always believed and believes she never lost anything bring a girl, in fact, she has got everything that she needs in her life. She never shied away from her work or seeking moral support when needed, and also points out that the CMD was a big source of motivation for her, right from the starting her career he trusted her on her core profile and pushed her out of her comfort zone and motivated her to take challenges. We at Machine Maker are proud to bring to you the inspiring story of this woman.
