By Monica Gupta BBC correspondent in Delhi

Women entrepreneurs are hoping to lead the way in improving business relations between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan.

Jehan Ara - sees lots of chances for working across the border

Karachi-based Jehan Ara, with family roots in India, owns Enabling Technologies, a multi-media and web development company in Pakistan.

As President of the Pakistan Software Houses Association she will head a 23 member Information Technology (IT) delegation to India in February.

The mission will be to explore opportunities for joint ventures and collaborations with Indian software firms.

India is an acknowledged world leader in the IT and software industry and the Pakistanis are hoping to benefit by exchanging ideas.

"We will be meeting with several software companies in India. We are looking forward to exchanging ideas and exploring possibilities of setting up joint ventures and research," Jehan Ara told BBC News Online.

"We feel, there are numerous possibilities of us working together," she said.

Ms Ara will not be the only woman in the delegation.

Call centre boom

She will be accompanied by Shaida Saleem, head of the IT committee in the Federation of Pakistan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI) and Zunaria Durrani, editor of Spider magazine, a prominent internet publication in Pakistan.

We want to make use of the changed political climate to develop direct links Chandra Garodia

According to Ms Ara, Pakistan has about 350 IT companies with revenues of between US$50-100 million dollars but she agrees that the industry is not as big as India.

"However, the last one year has seen Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO) really taking off in a big way in Pakistan. Similarly, call centre operations have also boomed, because, like India, we too have a good English speaking work force," she says.

Across the border in India, Chandra Garodia, President of the Delhi-headquartered Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) Ladies Organisation (FLO) is hoping to lead a 20 member delegation of women entrepreneurs to Pakistan soon.

She is awaiting official permission from both governments.

"As soon as we are granted permission, we would like to go to Islamabad and Lahore and meet with industry associations there.

Hostage to hostilities

Until now, Indian businesswomen could only interact with their Pakistani counterparts in international business events organized in other countries.

"We now want to make use of the changed political climate to develop direct links," says Ms Garodia.

Accompanying her would be entrepreneurs like Dr Kusum Ansal, a director in Ansal Properties, a real estate company owned by her family.

"My company will be keen to explore avenues of constructing colonies or shopping malls in Pakistan. We have done construction work in countries like Russia and Iraq," says Ansal.

The last time Indian women entrepreneurs travelled to Pakistan was in March 1997 during a South Asian regional summit.

But relations nose-dived following the 1999 fighting in Kashmir around Kargil.