In the high-tech electronic security business, Nirvana Mahase is very aware that female entrepreneurs aren’t so common and aren’t always taken seriously. “You have to work hard to be heard,” she says. “Sometimes clients prefer to deal with males. They find them more reassuring in this type of business.”
Some of the experience that Mahase says has served her well to this day was acquired as a schoolgirl, when she took advantage of excess quantities of “school stuff” in her home, offering them to classmates at competitive prices. Twenty years later, she has emerged as a recognised entrepreneur in a sector that is not dominated by women.
Mahase is a founding partner of GIOTECH, one of the more recognisable local trading names in the high-tech security business. Her partner, Giovanni Charles, was previously a freelance operator, installing safes and vaults for banks and other enterprises. It was Mahase who proposed to him that they create a partnership to serve the wider business community.
Over time, Mahase has grown in the technical aspects of the business and having personally managed at least seven major projects, her confidence has grown. She admits, however, that she had to overcome “nerves” and in some instances, mistakes.
Prior to becoming a co-founder of GIOTECH, Mahase and Charles founded the Guyana Yellow Pages online, an electronic advertising facility. Its success, however, was short-lived. Her current pursuit as a founder of GIOTECH has been far more rewarding. That apart, Mahase began to operate another service, Aegis, through which she ordered and supplied safes, vaults and gifts items locally. That initiative, however, was subsequently set aside in favor of GIOTECH.
Mahase now regards herself as a consummate professional rather than simply ‘the boss’ of a company, in which specialists are recruited to offer a highly specialised service. A member of the Texas-based Safe and Vault Technicians Association, she is still learning but has developed what she considers a high level of competency in running a business. Meanwhile, she appears to be having the time of her life as a security technology technician.
