If you talk about history, there was a saying, if a woman takes the form of an angry goddess, nothing wrong can be spared from her ravage. The saying has not lost its meaning even today. If she sets her mind on something, she tries her best to get that.
It has been discussed many times about what will happen if the business dominance is in the hands of women. Although, still the whole world is male dominated yet several women have proved their courage, their determination and their intellect. Throughout the world, women have outpaced men in the number of school enrollments, college enrollments and also in the bachelor’s degrees. This is definitely giving rise to a large number of women entering into different job fields and the pace with which it is happening, has never been seen before.
They have very smoothly taken leadership positions in several companies and have even entered into the shoes of entrepreneurship. In India, some of the records state that around 30% of all entrepreneurs are women and this possibly looks true as well looking at a number of startups by women that have gotten successful. It is now safe to say that slowly women are taking charge in the entrepreneurial world and may even surpass the number of men founders in some years!
Is it so easy for women?
However easy it seems, it is not! Women face several challenges in the field of entrepreneurship. The biggest challenge that comes in the way is that of trust. Many men still don’t consider women to be trusted for a particular job unless she has already proved herself. Most of the investors look for the team and the co-founders very deeply if the founder is a woman. The situation prevails even when many women have already made their companies a success and have gained much traction in past few years.
Apart from this, clients also have trust issues. With a project given to a woman, there are always apprehensions attached of whether the team will be able to deliver it or not. However, this situation exists only in the startup community and not in the case of MNCs or bigger companies. In fact, according to one of the reports, 73% of women startup founders fail to get any funding from investors. These records have not been overlooked by the government also which is proposing several policies every year to support women entrepreneurs. It is NOW that appears to be the right time for several women entrepreneurs to give their dreams a try and take the benefit of suitable working conditions that have been developed in the country.
Also Read: Hey Womaniya! Is it the right time for being an entrepreneur?
Golden Opportunity for women
TODAY, although not so easy, can be considered a golden opportunity for women in the country. Investors are focusing more on great ideas and are looking forward to support women startup founders. Academic incubation centres are providing opportunities to their female students equally as they are providing to male students. When several women have already built successful entrepreneurial businesses, they are themselves supporting and helping out new women entrepreneurs to succeed. Apart from these social factors, there are financial factors which are highly supportive of women entrepreneurs. Stand Up India Scheme launched in January 2016, facilitates loans from INR 10 lakhs to INR 1 crore to women entrepreneurs. This is applicable to all those women who are about to start their startup or have already started one. There could not be any better time to claim all these benefits!
Indian startup women stars
India has several inspiring stories of women startup founders. They faced challenges in the beginning but now are quite successful in their ventures. These women struggled for years, but finally they not only made their own dream come true but through their own journey, inspired several other women startup founders to believe in themselves. There are several examples such as Surabhi Dewra who started CareerGuide.com. She started this venture on career counselling when nobody was thinking about giving importance to it. Now after lots of struggle and dedication, she has now succeeded to even connect rural areas’ students and schools regarding career counselling.
Another inspiring story is that of Richa Kar. She started an online dedicated e-commerce store for women lingerie under the name Zivame. It was difficult for her to bring the things openly up in front of everybody when buying lingerie was constrained to just small box shaped dark stores.
One of the quite controversial names of 1990s is Ekta Kapoor. Many might not consider her as an entrepreneur but I would definitely consider her one of the most successful women entrepreneurs this country has seen. Although, I am not a big fan of hers, but I am a fan of her intellect and consumer understanding of making daily soaps. She changed the whole picture of Indian television and has a big hand behind the success of different channels such as Zee TV, Colors, Sony etc.
Women are backbone of a growing economy
Not that the concept of startups is new among Indian women, they have been exploring new industries for a long time now. Some of the popular names are Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Suchi Mukherjee, Chanda Kochar and Vandana Loothra. They started their journey of entrepreneurship when no one was even talking about startups. They have contributed a lot to the economy of the country and have certainly helped in uplifting masses.
With this list compiled for women entrepreneurs in India, there is no doubt in saying that women hold a strong position in Indian economy. One of the report by OECD even estimates that if women centric policies are made in entrepreneurship, India’s economy could increase by 2.4 percentage points.
Aakanksha Aggarwal
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