Our Journey
Indian Women in London & UK (IWLUK) was founded in March ‘22 as an initiative to bring the Indian women community together by creating an integrated social media networking platform across Facebook, Instagram & Whatsapp. London is a magnificent big city, but it can get very lonely here, living as an expat for last one decade, I understand the importance of having such a community for women, and that’s what inspired me to start IWLUK two years ago. The impact of women-only networks across the world is a growing phenomenon. There are few things as satisfying as being a part of a circle of women as small or large as it might be and knowing that you have an empowering, encouraging bunch who have your back. Our community is an instrumental in encouraging women to be their best selves and realizing that we are stronger when we come together. Today we have build a robust Indian women community to connect expats like me and also Indian heritage women born in the UK together, through various social and business networking events.
How did it all start?
I lived in Dubai for almost a decade, and used to run a whatsapp community for women and organize monthly meetups and events for mums and kids. When I moved to London in Feb 2022, I was looking to join an integrated Facebook & Whatsapp community, and quickly noticed a major gap in the market, that there was no such integrated community available, infact it was all dispersed. In 15 days landing into London, I started my first Whatsapp group of West London, in March I started our Facebook group, with a humble beginning of 100 members, and we started arranging meetups to connect with each other. I had the experience of running whatsapp groups from my Dubai days, but London is a big city, and people from East London hardly come to West, and from South hardly to North London. This led to the creation of location based whatsapp groups in London, and our next location group was East London. From those humble days the one thing I did right was – Never added anyone on whatsapp group through open links, I used to individually chat with the person, verify their profile on Facebook and then add them to our Whatsapp group. This process is very lengthy & cumbersome, but I wanted to build a network of known people, and was not keen on having unknown numbers in the group. This led to trust in people, this hardwork paid off, and within months the group started scaling as people were adding their friends to the group, and in no time we were 1500 people across multiple location based whatsapp groups & FB group by May of 2022. Till date I have individually added over 10,000+ Indian women in London & UK on our whatsapp network, and this took me two good years.
Where are we now?
Today, after a little over two years, our group has over 10,000 Indian women across 30+ Whatsapp groups in UK, 20,000+ members on Facebook and 30,000+ on Instagram. In the last two years we have had over 200+ social and business networking events. Today we have established five subgroups in IWLUK network: Fitness Club, Mums Club, Book Club, Career Netwoking Club and Business Hub. This community has enabled people to make friends, become family friends, supported small business network, provided a safe space for personal and professional support and most importantly united all of us under this platform which resonates with our tagline #togetherwegrow. In the last two years, so many people from our community had to move locations (eg, London to Milton Keynes or Greenwich to Harrow), and they could seamlessly do so, due to our whatsapp network, and quickly adjust to the new location. As a community leader its very important to be humble, empathetic and approachable as people reach out to you for various personal/professional issues which requires your time & effort, and at the heart of all, its all about how many peoples lives have been better due to this community. If I have to define it, today we have reached our foundational phase, with all eyes set on growth phase over next coming years.
What was the most challenging part of building this community?
Imagine being a new person in a new city like London, everything was a challenge for me to build this group. I mean literally, two years ago, I did not know anything, I had to learn each and everything from google & failing experiences. In this process of building a community, the biggest challenge is having a balance between community & family time, In the last two years, I have spent approx 10-12 hrs a day in building the community, and this massively impacted my physical & mental health. I lost a lot of weight, lost my appetite, had hardly any time for my family, never could explore London and completely became addicted to social media, as this is a full time job with no weekends. In this journey, of running a women community, unfortunately its not always rosy & nice, I had to come across some really difficult personalities who mocked, criticized, laughed, and threatened me, as I was the new girl in town & their only goal was to make me fail. Even today there are few women who find ways to spread rumors about me but it doesn’t bother me anymore because I know my community believes in my work and that’s my only focus. On the outset, running a community may seem easy, but it requires tremendous dedication, strong mindset, community support and most importantly it requires unwavering support from your family, friends & children, as this comes at a sacrifice of their time. I receive over 1000+ whatsapp messages daily and with that I have to manage my kids – school drops, cooking, daily errands and non-stop calls. I would like you all to know that if I don’t reply to your Whatsapp message or FB Messenger its not because I don’t intend to reply but its nature of my work where I get flooded with 1000’s of messages daily and I have to prioritize based on sense of urgency, the quickest way to reach me for something urgent is to email me on [email protected]
What is your way forward?
I started with WhatsApp group, moved to Facebook group, built Instragram, process, innovation, scale & technology is the only way forward in building a community. Last year, we were pre-dominantly a meetup group, today we are a social and a business networking community supporting Indian women from all walks of life. Today we are partnering with councils & corporates to becoming more creative in our way forward. I have been asked before, what is our niche, and my simple answer to that is “Our Community” is our niche. Our way forward is simple, as our community keeps growing, we keep growing with them, and we constantly innovate by catering to their needs, we innovate on behalf of our community, and do not force an idea upon them, that’s the key to success. We are just a simple community, but our operating model is very complex and the best part of this is, all this has happened very organically.
What is your aspiration?
Our aspiration is not to become the biggest Indian Women community, neither it is to compete with any other community, we want to be the most integrated & valued community for Indian Women in London & UK. We want to be the most relevant community even in 2034, this is just our beginning, I consider this to be a journey, not a sprint or race, and we will do the right things at right time, and we will only do it, to cater to our niche “Our Community”. Nobody likes monotony, and nobody likes change, to run a community effectively, its important to balance these factors, and this cannot be learnt, it has to be experienced with time.
What are you most proud of in this journey?
I pride myself on being the most approachable community admin in the Indian Women network space, people consider me to be their friend first and admin later, and I want to keep it that way, as that is who Lovina Shenoy as a person is.
My favorite Quote?
"Celebrating another woman's triumphs or success will never take away from your shine or glory. If anything, it'll add to it and create more light."