As challenging as the past one and a half year has been due to destruction by COVID-19 and financial hardships exacerbated by the global pandemic, it is undeniable that these unprecedented situations have brought about catalysing changes.

The world as it was undergoing an almost complete transition. Students had to get accustomed to online education, governments met virtually for policymaking, businesses even the Kirana stores – had to shift to easy-to-use online channels, and most importantly, remote work-from-home became a reality for entrepreneurs and employees worldwide.

The figures from last year show a worrying and sad reality as 26.6 percent of the female workforce moved out of the labour force, juxtaposed to the 13.4 percent of men. But women entrepreneurs have certainly used the technological shift to boost their business journey by overcoming the traditional barriers in remote working, operations management, hiring and networking.

In recent years, innovations in patenting, design, testing, and issuing patents and trademarks have led to the development and expansion of “business opportunities”, making India a centre of innovation. This has also started India on its way to build a robust Intellectual Property Rights infrastructure.

Government body Controller General of Patents, Designs & Trade Marks (CGPDTM) has quadrupled the number of patents and trademark registrations in the past five years, taking “extreme caution” to expedite patent testing for SMEs, businesswomen, and start-ups.

Healthcare demands a caring persona and a deep understanding of problem solving. Businesses in this space must fulfill the needs of both patients and workers. Health tech is the new face of the healthcare industry which has seen enough disruption to last a lifetime. Nidhi Jain is a strong health tech leader with a praiseworthy womanpreneur story. 

Nidhi Jain, the woman behind KareXpert

Nidhi Jain is a womanpreneur who is leading India’s first-ever SaaS based integrated digital healthcare platform. She is also the brain behind India’s first company to offer a most exhaustive portfolio for hospitals. She has managed to differentiate her company in the industry which is now a unique competitor in the market. 

Health tech, a sector with huge potential

Nidhi’s vision for her start-up was to make healthcare accessible and affordable to Indian society and to digitally empower hospitals. She saw that the Indian healthcare IT is in its infancy stage, operating as a manual process with too many inefficiencies. However, it was predicted to touch 5% of $200 B with 30%+ CAGR (compound annual growth rate) within three years. Thus, she found a huge potential to tap into health tech. 

On the entrepreneurial front, Nidhi was inspired by entrepreneurs, and she connected the dots to her roots in healthcare. Since she comes from a family of healthcare professionals, she quickly identified the gap in the market for B2B and digital solutions. This motivated her to eventually launch her start-up. 

What KareXpert does 

KareXpert digitally connects different kinds of hospitals. It offers end-to-end digital empowerment to hospitals and healthcare providers through its comprehensive range of AI-enabled, cloud-based and mobile-ready solutions designed for coordinated patient care, optimising operational costs and increasing revenue. They have an advanced, secured and certified webscale software technology stack and their integrated solution has over 50 applications including Advanced HIMS (Hospital Information Management System), e-Claims, MIS (management information system) Reports, etc. 

How Nidhi drove the Business Model of KareXpert

When Nidhi started out her entrepreneurial journey, the concept of digital healthcare was a novelty with a lot of scepticism around its efficacy. There were hardly any players in the market and Nidhi entered the industry as a disruptor. She started out with providing doctor consultation solutions in health tech. Her previous product management experience enabled her to expertly pivot the business model towards the B2B market. Through KareXpert, Nidhi worked to fix the broken experience of patients in healthcare with respect to availing digital services. 

Food prepared by home cooks, housewives and stay-at-home mothers is the most valuable and precious asset which money can’t buy. No gourmet restaurant can provide the satisfaction of eating a fresh, home-style meal made by experienced hands. 

Daalchini, the Woman-led Enterprise

Daalchini is a food tech start-up based in the Delhi-NCR region that’s improving access to affordable home cooked food through IoT (Internet of Things) technology. The company sets up food kiosks and provides instant, affordable, healthy home cooked food through IoT enabled phygital (physical + digital) vending machines. Prerna Kalra leads the enterprise and is currently one of India’s emerging women leaders who turned an idea perceived as feminine (home cooked food) into a novel start-up innovation.

Prerna Kalra – Brain behind the company 

Prerna Kalra, the brain behind Daalchini is a former Paytm employee who co-founded the start-up alongside her Paytm colleague Vidya Bhushan. 

Her womanpreneur story

Prerna Kalra’s womanpreneur story stemmed from a brief work visit to China where she found the answer to her constant struggle with accessing fresh home cooked meals amidst a busy schedule every day. The answer was found in vending machines that could dispense fresh food items. She leveraged the huge tiffin services sector in India after thorough research into the market for home cooked food. 

Business acumen

Prerna’s keen eye quickly observed that despite the home tiffin market comprising over 3500 services providers back in 2017, access to home food was still difficult for consumers. Through Daalchini, she quickly tapped into the demand for strong tiffin and home food services. She also identified several gaps in the market like the shortfall of the logistics infrastructure which she fulfilled through her start-up Daalchini. 

Prerna’s Vision for Home-Cooked Meals in Food Tech

Prerna’s vision for home-cooked meals in food tech was to make healthy and affordable home food instantly available to consumers. The company’s fleet of smart vending machines that make this possible became operational in business settings such as offices, hospitals, and hotels. 

How she led the vending machine concept for home-style meals

Prerna led the company into a vending machine concept for home-style meals by bringing together a team of home chefs who started working at 3 am every day to prepare daily fresh food using prescribed recipes and ingredients. Food safety compliance norms are met with and monitored to ensure that the food is consumable, healthy, and safe to be vended out of the Daalchini kiosks. 

In a fiercely competitive business environment, new startups are jostling to own the maximum share in reach and profit pie. We live in a digitally induced lifestyle, surrounded by abundant information and ideas that can be overwhelming at times. It is a risk for the startups and businesses to get lost in the clutter and might even get erased from people’s recall. The distinctiveness is lost in the process, which is why the personal branding of entrepreneurs is imperative.

The road to entrepreneurship is a bumpy one. When an entrepreneur comes out of its cocoon to do something disruptive they undergo several barriers and hardships. These hardships further shape the entrepreneur’s personality and journey to add distinctiveness to it. Many Indian entrepreneurs perceive personal branding to be an advertisement for themselves that might not give the business limelight whereas, effective personal branding can drive tractions to business and generate leads.

Personal branding helps an individual communicate their unique story and draws attention to what matters. It strengthens the trust between business, colleagues, and clients alike while boosting the reputation of the business founder and fostering successful relationships- both personally and professionally.

The art of personal branding is well showcased by Shailja Dutt, founder of Weryz, a personal branding solutions app, helping individuals to deep dive into the brand ‘You’.

Shailja Dutt – her journey of entrepreneurship

Shailja Dutt, an economic honours graduate from Lady Shri Ram College, holds an MBA from International Management Institute. Weryz is not Shailja’s first entrepreneurial attempt. She first stepped into the entrepreneurial shoes two decades ago by establishing Stellar Search-a leadership advisory firm specializing in senior talent acquisition in emerging markets across the globe. It provides services in Leadership Assessment, Executive Coaching, Employer Brand Consulting with its presence in India, South East Asia, and Africa. 

The founder feels that the important aspect of an individual choosing a career path or beginning a business should be finding the ‘Why’ and position themselves as thought leaders. The answer to Why is what most aspiring entrepreneurs do not have an answer to. To enable individuals to showcase their unique journeys and answer the ‘Why’ effectively led Shailja Dutt to set up personal branding firm Weryz in October 2020.  

Sequoia Capital India, one of the biggest investors in India’s startup ecosystem has recently launched an entrepreneurship programme called Sequoia Spark for women entrepreneurs belonging to countries India and Southeast Asia. 

India is the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem but surprisingly ranks 70th out of a list of 77 countries in the female entrepreneurship index according to the IWWAGE report. The report also says only 7 out of 100 entrepreneurs in India are women with nearly half of them get into business out of necessity than aspiration.

To encourage entrepreneurship spirit in women, Sequoia has launched its entrepreneurship programme considering the hindrances an Indian woman faces for beginning her startup or business. 

Let us deep dive more into Sequoia’s fellowship programme. 

What is Sequoia Spark Fellowship Programme?

Women entrepreneurs under Sequoia Spark Fellowship will offer a $1,00,000 yearly grant to 15 women entrepreneurs from India and Southeast Asia. In return for the grant Sequoia will not seek any stake or ownership in the startup. Those startups that are at the pre-launch stage or pre-product-market-fit stage are eligible for this programme. The selected entrepreneurs will receive one-on-one mentorship for one year with a senior Sequoia India investment advisor.

How will Sequoia Spark Fellowship benefit women entrepreneurs?

According to EdelGive Foundation, businesses owned by women in India can grow upto 90 percent in the coming 5 years provided there are adequate government schemes supporting women entrepreneurship. The $1,00,000 grant offered by Sequoia will act as priming for startups as according to IFC (International Finance Corporation) report, 70 percent of the women entrepreneur’s finance requirements are unmet. Such programmes will give greater access to knowledge, network, mentorship, and capital to women entrepreneurs, therefore, creating a conducive environment for women-led businesses to thrive. 

What is This Programme?

The largest Tech Design Conference, Tech Supergirl, is empowering, incubating and raising women in the technological space in India. It is a digital virtual assistant for startups and corporations. Along with technical skill building and startup incubation, the programme also serves as a corporate partner to provide assistance in sales, marketing and digital automation.

Being led by over 100 women-led startups, more than 60 women entrepreneurs as nominees, judged by 7 jury members and panellists, with 3 event partners and over 250 event attendees, the event was a major hit for aspiring women entrepreneurs, technology stakeholders and women in business.

Who Has Launched It?

Tech Supergirl Program, the first and largest tech incubation programme, is launched by Indian Women Institution League (IWIL) India in collaboration with SSC NASSCOM, National Skill Development Corporation and Shell E4.

IWIL is a non-profit organisation aiming to incubate and accelerate women entrepreneurs, and strengthen the women-led business ecosystem to create a future inclusive of socially and economically independent women.

The world is a tough place for women. From the historical accounts of denial of the fundamental rights to the contemporary challenges in daily life that women face, their journey is far too different (and more difficult) than it is for the opposite gender in the race. More so, India is an even more difficult country for women to succeed in and navigate through life. 

Case in point, one of today’s most successful entrepreneurs and amongst the biggest names in India’s business circles, described as the ‘original slumdog millionaire’, a compliment as backhanded as it is degrading – Kalpana Saroj. Saroj is an Indian Dalit woman who once attempted suicide to escape discrimination, poverty, and physical abuse and is now the Chairperson of a multi-million dollar company. 

Here we attempt to document her journey, which is the epitome and an icon of the Dalit struggle, as well as the difficult life of a woman from the margins of society.

Rags to Riches: Story of the Woman who has lived this Phrase

Kalpana Saroj’s is a story that is seldom heard in India and is even rarer to become a sensation for not only women but an entire generation of entrepreneurs. Her life seems like the outline of a Hindi film, with a narrative that has overturned so many hindrances to resolve with a pleasant ending. The “rags to riches” cliché can be overused, but it goes some way in describing the story of Saroj, a woman who struggled on almost all the occasions on her way to the top. 

Born into a family from the Dalit community, she was harassed at school, coerced into marriage at the age of 12, and fought discrimination and social pressures to leave her husband, before she tried to take her own life. 

India’s caste system is an ancient orthodox social hierarchy still practised by a majority of Indians. This hierarchy puts people into different strata by virtue of their birth – people born into the lower castes have historically faced oppression and discrimination. As a Dalit woman growing up in a remote village, Kalpana’s gender and caste made her life more challenging as these identities hung like a double-edged sword over her in her journey to the top.

After being wedded off at the tender age of 12, she was forced to live in a Mumbai slum with her husband’s abusive family, only to be later rescued by her father. She went back to her village to live with her parents. There, she attempted suicide after being ostracised by the villagers. 

Upasana Taku, who handled finances during the formative stages of MobiKwik was annoyed with the behaviour of auditors, investors and bankers when they avoided having a conversation with her regarding the money matters of the startup. They said they wanted to deal with someone male. This somehow baffled her as female leaders in the banking or finance space are not unusual. Such instances are common with the female entrepreneurs that form just the tip of the iceberg.

India is the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem but puts up a dismal performance when it comes to female entrepreneurship. According to the November 2020 report by IWWAGE (Initiative for What Works to Advance Women and Girls in the Economy) a gender research and advocacy organization, only 7 out of 100 entrepreneurs in India are women and that too nearly half of them get into the business out of necessity rather than passion or aspiration. 

Out of 77 countries covered in the female entrepreneurship Index, India ranks 70th. As per the August 2019 report of the International Finance Corporation, India ranks third among countries reporting gender gaps in business. Only 33 percent of the early-stage entrepreneurs are women. 

Does that mean Indian female entrepreneurs are incompetent to run a business? 

According to a survey by EdelGive Foundation, it found that female entrepreneurship in India are likely to grow upto 90 percent in the next five years provided government schemes supporting such women-led businesses are present. The survey found a meager one percent of the women entrepreneurs surveyed to be aware of the government schemes. 

Female entrepreneurs carry the potential to create 150-170 million jobs in India by 2030, as per a joint report from Google and Bain& Company. It is indeed shocking that despite holding such potential with promising statistics we are behind.