The germination of the Indian Association of Secretaries and Administrative Professionals (IASAP) started after Homai Mehta encouraged her husband Homi to visit the Kansas City, Missouri headquarters of the National Institute of Personal Secretaries (NIPS) of which she was a member. He had been sent to USA by the Lions International on a study project. The couple then started working on the formation of NIPS in India. "They drafted the memorandum and articles of association and got it registered as a society,” noted past IASAP president Moti Vazifdar. NIPS was then renamed National Institute of Professional Secretaries and later IASAP.
When Homai passed away on September 15, 2020, she was the president emeritus of the all-India body in addition to serving as the director of the Sir J. J. College of Commerce (SJJCC), and chairperson of the India region of the Women Entrepreneurs (WE) Wing of the World Zarathushti Chamber of Commerce (WZCC).
"She has been the key person guiding us to focus on the professionalism of secretaries and administrative assistants,” wrote Vazifdar. Homai’s aim "to ensure that women administrative professionals should create a niche for themselves in corporate corridors has been fulfilled.” IASAP has a membership of 1,500 professionals, six chapters within the country and is affiliated to the Association of Secretaries in Asia.
(Above, from l) Niloufer Tarapore, Homi and
Hushedar Mehta: remembering Homai Mehta (inset) Photo: Jasmine D. Driver
Homai was appointed as faculty and administrative coordinator in January 1966 when SJJCC set up a secretarial division to groom girls to become personal secretaries, noted Vazifdar. Homi was appointed honorary director.
As noted yet another past president of IASAP Zarine Commissariat, Homai "gave secretaries in all our chapters the opportunity to network, look out for new jobs, learn by attending monthly meetings and make friends all over India and also in Asia” by attending Indian and Asian congresses. "We cannot thank Homai and Homi Mehta enough.”
Former Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) trustee Dinshaw Tamboly noted that Homai was "the perfect illustration of what a committed and dedicated professional was capable of achieving with soft spoken firmness, blended (with) good grace and finesse.” He further commended her "handling of operational problems with pragmatic solutions.” The SJJCC functions under the BPP. As added former BPP chairman Dinshaw Mehta, "We trustees had no reason to worry about anything going wrong… She single-handedly ran the College… She will be missed by the countless students who would have passed under her watchful eye.”
To former BPP chairman and erstwhile global president of WZCC, Minoo Shroff, Homai "was a master of her teaching…She excelled in whatever she did.” Behroze Daruwalla, chairperson, WE and international board member of WZCC who knew Homai for four decades stated, "We never let her leave WZCC…We held on, though on many occasions she requested to step down on account of her health...Her name added stature to our organization.”
Homai schooled in Tuticorin, Tamil Nadu, where her father was employed in the textile industry. She completed her graduation in arts from National College, Bombay. The able director is survived by Homi, daughter Niloufer Tarapore and son Hushedar. As noted an emotional Tarapore, with a quaver in her voice, on October 9, "What (my brother and I) are today is only because of the mentoring of our parents and their ideals of simple living but high thinking… The silent but (unstinted) support of our father in all her endeavors had made her achieve what she strived for.”