SPIRIT OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Working
women face an uphill task
Rashmi Vallabhajosyula says she has two full-time
jobs: one as a mom, the other as an entrepreneur. She has two boys aged 10
and 9 years, and she runs a marketing services company she founded in 2007.
She says she plans to keep the enterprise small for the moment in order to balance
her two roles. She also wants to pursue other interests that include taking
forward a LinkedIn forum called Indian Women Entrepreneurs Network that has
over 600 members and seeks to encourage entrepreneurship among women by
sharing experiences.
It’s the typical challenge that working women in
India face. It’s also the reason why most of the people featured in this
column over the past two and a half years have been men. That’s not to say
there aren’t many women entrepreneurs. There are, and their numbers are
rising. The extent of their success is often limited by their dual roles,
and sometimes by their subconscious desire not to outdo the men in their
lives. But many of the stories are fascinating, and we’ll henceforth bring
more of them in this column.
Today, we look at some of the challenges that women
entrepreneurs in particular face, and how they could deal with them:
• In the Indian social environment, it’s the men who tend to take the
decisions. So women in business often lack the self-confidence to take
decisions. Anjana Vivek, founder of consulting company VentureBean and
formerly COO at the N S Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning at
IIM, Bangalore, says the only solution to this is for women to start
thinking for themselves. “Push yourself to take decisions,” she says.
Rashmi points out that entrepreneurship is a learned skill, like say
tennis. The better the coach, the better you become as an entrepreneur. “So
get mentors who have been through the entrepreneurship path, get advice on
how to balance work and family,” she says.
• Networking is critical in entrepreneurship, but a majority of women find
it difficult to make those first contacts, leave alone follow it up with
informal meets. “Men have networks that come from engineering and
management schools and they don’t let go of those relationships. But women,
in the course of building careers and managing family, often forget to
build business networks,” says Poornima Shenoy, founder and CEO of
educational consulting and skill development firm Latitude. Women also tend
to be apologetic about going out for a drink or dinner because of their
responsibilities at home. Revathy Ashok, former managing director and head
of finance at American real estate company Tishman Speyer, says women’s
multiple identities — at home, work and social spaces — provide great
avenues to build networks. “Create environments that are meaningful to
you,” she says. Shanti Mohan, who founded Ionic Microsystems, which has now
been acquired, notes that it has today become much easier to network due to
online platforms like LinkedIn.
• When starting a venture, you will invariably have to connect with many
strangers. But women are not comfortable talking to strangers, and there is
always the safety issue with strangers. “One strategy that some women
entrepreneurs adopt is to take a friend or two along for such meetings. The
friend could even pretend to be part of the venture,” says Anjana Vivek.
• Funding may be more difficult for women because potential investors may
perceive a gender risk, the fear of the woman entrepreneur getting
distracted by family matters at some point in the venture. Experts advise
that it would be best to get the initial funding from their own network.
Once you prove yourself, funding may not be a problem.
• Women entrepreneurs must recognize that there could be times in their
lives when family would have to take more priority. “Figure out what your
personal lifecycle is likely to be and learn to accept and deal with that,”
says Vivek. Vinita Ananth has four children, two biological and two
adopted. Family is a priority for her. But she does not think that impacts
the vision she has for her year-old software product company called
GitGrow. “You can do wonders with small teams and a big vision,” she says.
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