Struggles Which Women Entrepreneurs Face In India

In my opinion, entrepreneurship is the best and ideal way to prove ourselves in this competitive market. In India people considering women a marriage material rather than an individual person.

In India, people admire women when she cooks well, not when she is handling a business well.

When she tries to come out of the box and starts her dream journey of becoming an independent woman, her own family started posting restrictions, that this is the time for you to get married and who will take care of you if something bad happens. Most people tend to get their daughters married by 25.

Entrepreneurship is the field of work where risk is a must. If you want to create yourself as a successful entrepreneur, you have to take risks. However, the risk business is dominated by men. People consider that women are not capable enough to take risks. In India, the importance of marriage for women and household responsibilities are more important than the importance of living an independent life.

Forget about women, even men are not encouraged much for entrepreneurship. Indian culture is less entrepreneurial as compared to other countries, except in some states like Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, Delhi, etc., but still, they are mostly encouraged to run the family business, rather than creating something on their own. Most Indians want their children (both males and females) to score good marks in graduation and post-graduation and land in a decent white-collar job.

When it comes to handle a big project and finish it, women are not much trusted than a man. In India, most of people have a mentality that women should be more worried about their home, children, and spouse. There are people who do not want to employ women because of many reasons.

She will become pregnant or will get married or she will not be able to work and so on. Census report of 2011 shows that the average education of Indian women is 1.25 years.

There are some courageous women who start their journey as an entrepreneur and when they go to bank asking for a loan, bank denies to give money cause they think she may not able to repay the loan.

I am not denying that there are no women entrepreneurs in India, there are most successful women entrepreneurs such as Naina Lal Kidwai, who is the chairman of HSBC India and director of HSBC Asia Pacific, Indira Nooyi who is CEO of PEPSICO, Sehnaz Hussain who is CEO Of Sehnaz Herbals.

However, still, there are many challenges that women have to face when she thinks of starting her career as an entrepreneur.

Here, is the list of some of the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs:

1. Firstly, No one takes their idea and creativity seriously.

2. They face difficulties to find investors for their company cause some investors don’t want to invest in their company just because they are women.

3. Lack of support and network in the men dominated industries.

4. Lack of financial support

5. Fear of failure

6. Hardships in team building

7. Discouraging remarks from society

8. Work-life balance

9. Having children while building a career

10. Confidence In business skills.

India has the third-largest start-up base in the entire world. Over 1,000 new start-ups were added in the last year. Yet, the percentage of female start-up founders in India is a measly 11%. The greatest deterrent to women entrepreneurs is that they are women. Again, when a woman owns a business in a male-dominated industry, hiring and managing men and being the “boss” can be a struggle. When women do a partnership with male entrepreneurs for their business they have to face many difficulties. Being a woman it’s challenging but one thing is sure that we are powerful beyond our own knowledge. There are many assumptions that have been made for women entrepreneurs.

For example,

• Is she capable enough to take hard decisions?

• Do es she have any idea?

• Disbelief- Can a woman be a boss?

• Is she capable enough to handle big business?

In a nutshell, women have to continuously prove that they are competent and they have capabilities to handle the challenges. So, What do Female Founders Do? What do we do with this information? We can work on change, but if you’re a female entrepreneur, you need to work harder, think bigger, focus on the big vision, ask for more, be stronger and approach many more investors, to get the funds you need if you’re looking for capital.

You also need to be stronger while dealing with customers and investors. I think hats off to all women entrepreneurs out there who are making it big! Lots of love and respect to all Entrepreneurs! Cheers!