According to a Bain & Company and Google report titled ‘Powering the Economy with Her’, India has 13.5–15.7 million women-owned enterprises, representing 20 per cent of all enterprises. While large in absolute numbers, these are overwhelmingly comprised of single-person enterprises, which provide direct employment for an estimated 22 to 27 million people. Yet, success stories of women entrepreneurs can be counted on fingers.
It’s important to understand that more women entrepreneurs are crucial not only for gender diversity but for the economy as well. Accelerating quantity and quality of entrepreneurship can create over 30 million women-owned enterprises, of which 40 per cent can be more than self-employment, the report says. This can generate potentially transformational employment in India, of 150–170 million jobs, which is more than 25 per cent of the new jobs required for the entire working-age population, from now until 2030.
“Entrepreneurship for a woman can be highly demanding and disruptive, so the support has to be a lot deeper, stronger and multi-faceted. Women, too, should know that it is not about the gender, but one’s abilities and aptitude as an entrepreneur,” says Meena Ganesh, MD & CEO, Portea Medical – a home healthcare services provider. Someone who started her entrepreneurial journey with customer support in the year 2000, Meena believes that as a leader, it becomes crucial to create deep strategies and be involved in the execution process.
Recent studies show that female-founded startups take substantially less time to exit than the overall market, so from a business perspective investing in women entrepreneurs is an undervalued opportunity. “Women know the problems faced by other women. They are able to approach innovation from a place of empathy and experience in a way that is poised to capture the attention of millions of other women who make up the majority of household buying decisions. That is a huge market opportunity,” believes Jesse Draper, Founding Partner, Halogen Ventures. She advises women to do their research thoroughly about the ecosystem, know VCs that invest in women, and ensure that their product/service is unique.
Pallavi Saha, Founder, Kleanly, is one such young entrepreneur who is trying to address the problem of water conservation. Leaving her comfortable corporate job, Saha spent some time interacting with founders of several failed startups in the space and spent the next half a year to figure out solutions for saving water (de-signed an add-on machine to recycle water up to 90 per cent), operations (built a sustainable ops model & figured out an AI algorithm to revamp logistics) and trust & reliability (built a quality management model while engaging the customer to contribute to a purpose). “Men alone do not need a change for women to succeed, women also need to be more upfront and assertive — in learning, putting their point across and for an equal seat on the table,” she says.
It’s true that the number of women entrepreneurs has increased significantly over the last few years, especially given the leapfrogging of the digital economy. However, our society is still gearing for the need to increase gender diversity. Courtney Boyd Myers, Co-founder & CEO, AKUA – a company making plant-based foods from regenerative aquaculture raised her first round of funds through Summit – a global network of entrepreneurs she helped build. She agrees that opportunities have opened up for women entrepreneurs but believes VCs need to support women more. “Those at the top simply have to operate from a place of abundance knowing that in helping others, it won’t take anything away from their success but create a more successful ecosystem and economy with more opportunities for everyone,” she says.
Some experts believe that the best women entrepreneurs are those who are focused on their mission and their customers. Women are typically excellent managers, keeping their egos in check and very good with keeping spendings down when there is not much to go around. Vikram Hosangady, Partner and Head-Clients & Market, KPMG India, is also optimistic. “The dramatic rise of women entrepreneurs in the last decade has made the ecosystem much more robust, and as long as we see families promoting and nurturing women to take the lead in either existing managing business or setting up their ventures, we are in for a significant shift in the rise of women entrepreneurs.”
Some like Caroline Beckham, Founder, Nouri – a probiotics company, just want to change and drive awareness towards immunity. “The more I learned about human health, the clearer it became that gut health is the cornerstone for overall wellbeing, 70 per cent of the immune cells in your body are located in your gut.” She believes that in terms of creating opportunities in industry and earning backing for new ventures, entrepreneurs, regardless of gender, must keep the quality of the product intact, whatever it may be.
Tim Draper, an American venture capitalist and founder of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, believes that women need to trust themselves more to take risks with their businesses and money. “They need to think about their long-term goals for the business. Most top venture firms are not interested in buying into a business that the entrepreneur wants to build and sell. We want more women to start businesses, and the women I have funded have been extraordinary.”
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The article has been written by Pallavi Chakravorty from the Times Group.
Disclaimer: This article has been produced on behalf of Meet the Drapers by Times Internet’s Spotlight team.
