WOMAN / ENTREPRENEUR SPECIAL.... Venus honchos & the start-up universe

Venus honchos & the start-up universe

With just nine per cent of India’s over 4,200 start-ups being founded by women, is there an inherent gender bias at play? In the run-up to International Women’s Day, Gargi Gupta examines the societal and economical hurdles that stand in the way of women becoming entrepreneurs

Everyone’s talking about start-ups these days, about the likes of Sachin Bansal (Flipkart), Deepinder Goyal (Zomato) and Bhavish Aggarwal (Ola) who’ve built large companies with multibillion dollar valuations in less than a decade. But where are the women in the ranks of these success stories? The disparity is obvious when you consider the recent compilation of the “top 30 start-ups in India” by TechInAsia, a media platform for start-ups, which lists just two women — Shuchi Mukherjee of Limeroad, an online retailer of women’s clothes and accessories, at number 18, and Richa Kar, founder-CEO of online lingerie retailer Zivame, at number 29. Is there then an inherent gender bias in the Indian start-up ecosystem that prevents women from turning entrepreneurs? Yes and no, say women start-up entrepreneurs who’ve gone through the grind. There is the rise of role models in women who’ve risen to senior management levels in large companies, and greater exposure levels, all of which are fuelling start-up dreams. But the biggest obstacle, feels Padmaja Ruparel, president of Indian Angel Network (IAN), comes from the fact that traditionally, Indian women do not own assets which they can leverage as collaterals to seek a loan. A woman may need permission from someone — a husband, a father, a son. “Secondly, our bankers still look for a guarantee when backing woman entrepreneurs,” says Ruparel. “And finally, there is a sense of instability over what will happen when the woman entrepreneur gets married or has a child?” Beating the odds Anisha Singh was pregnant when she went to investors with her idea for a website that aggregated discount coupons. It was 2009, and the idea of a discount marketplace was just taking off globally — Groupon then had only just spread its activities to its second American city. But Indian venture capitalists weren’t enthused and Singh decided to bootstrap (she already had a very successful e-educational business she’d started in the US). Then came a chance meeting with Sanjeev Bhikchandani and Hitesh Oberoi of InfoEdge, which resulted in an invitation to pitch once more and Singh had her first tranche of funds. Today, Mydala, her company, has an annual service value of Rs4,000 crore, operates in 209 Indian cities, and last year sold 62 million coupons. Mehak Shahani, of wedding services portal WedMeGood, feels that there should be higher representation of women in venture capital firms. Especially since, she says, women are the primary drivers, influencers and purchasers of India’s ecommerce start-ups and “it takes a woman at the other end to better comprehend what your offering is”. Shanti Mohan, founder of LetsVenture, a Bangalore-based online platform that connects start-up founders with investors, has a different take. The notion of women not being able to raise funds because of their gender is a myth in the present professional and competitive ecosystem of angel investors and venture capital funds, she feels. “Don’t blame it on being a woman. Perhaps, the reason is that their businesses are not scaleable. But even that is changing as we are seeing a lot of women investors.” Ruparel agrees: “An investor, a good investor, will not look below the neck when he’s evaluating a proposal at a pitch session. The only thing he is looking for is return on investment.” Ironically, Ruparel’s own IAN has a glaring gender disparity — of its 400 or so investors, only two are women! Of society and conditioning The primary obstacle, of course, remains social conditioning. Something as silly as a flirtatious man who refuses to believe that a woman before him is the CEO of a company. It happened to Anu Acharya, a Hyderabad-based serial entrepreneur, and CEO of MapMyGenome, a start-up which offers molecular diagnostic and personal genomic services. “This happened some years ago. I was at the Ocimum Bio Solution (another start-up that she had started) at a trade fair and this man came up to speak to me, saying he knew the CEO. I was amused because I was then the CEO. When he was leaving, we shook hands and he asked for my card — and I gave it to him. He didn’t know how to react.” “Being an entrepreneur is hard work,” adds Mohan, “with erratic hours, late evenings and impromptu meetings. The family sacrifices a lot. There’s no gratification of a pay cheque at the end of the month, and real paybacks of a business only start flowing in with time. Without a supportive family, it can be tough.” It’s a sentiment several women entrepreneurs echo. “Earlier, when I worked, I could take a day off if I wanted to. Now it’s very hard, even if it’s a family function,” says Shahani of WedMeGood, which she co-founded with her husband Anand in 2014. The Shahanis are not the only husband-wife founder pair around. There’s also Pranshu Patni and husband Nishant of educational app Culture Alley, and Mu Sigma’s Rajaram and Ambiga Dhiraj, who recently took over as CEO of the Unicorn start-up (i.e. a start-up with a valuation of $1 billion) to name just two. “As entrepreneurs, women have an advantage over men,” feels Ruparel. “They can multitask, they have emotional quotient which makes them natural leaders and they are very focused because they have to balance two careers — one at home and the other at work.” It’s a hard task and limiting for an entrepreneur. Mydala’s Singh, for instance, says she was back at work within 10 days of giving birth. “I follow a simple rule. I leave office at 6.30 in the evening and follow a strict no-phones rule until 10 at night — I spend this time with my daughters (now six and 18 months old). Of course, I’m back online after they’ve gone to bed and take calls till late at night, starting again in the morning once they’ve left for school.” Acharya of MapMyGenome adds that she’d never have been able to manage if she hadn’t been living in a joint family set-up. Bridging the gap Despite the budget’s recent announcement that it was setting up a Rs500 crore fund to encourage entrepreneurship among women, India does not fare well in a woman friendly business environment. India came a middling 18 among 31 countries featured in The 2015 Global Women Entrepreneur Leaders Scorecard. According to a NASSCOM study last year, only nine per cent of India’s more than 4,200 start-ups — the third highest in the world — have been founded by women. The good news is that that was a 50 per cent jump over the number of women entrepreneurs the year before. Perhaps what’s needed is a platform such as Nasscom’s Women Techship, a networking forum for women technology professionals, dedicated to women start-up entrepreneurs. Mydala’s Singh says it’s an idea whose time has come. “There are informal forums. I am, and I know other women founders are, always accessible on mail and at public talks. But I have been working on an institutional platform, such as this one for some time and hope to announce something soon. Times have changed and people have come to accept working women. By the time my daughters grow up, I hope women working and setting up businesses will become the norm.” gargi.gupta@dnaindia.net, @