Saturday, June 1, 2013

WOMEN/ENTREPRENEUR SPECIAL...Working women face an uphill task



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.

Sujit John & Shilpa Phadnis TNN TOI130529

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