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Woman Special: Woman Entrepreneurs,

from Ancient Period to Modern Day
Woman Special: Woman Entrepreneurs, from Ancient Period to Modern Day

Women are described as the better half on men. They play a key role in the conservation of
basic life support systems like land, water, flora, and fauna. In Hindu scriptures, women are
described as the embodiment of Shakti that means a source of power. Today, their role has
changed. A woman is a driver of a family and in turn nation. And, they do not want to bid
their lives in the four walls of the room. They are leaving their marks in different parts of life,
and the entrepreneurial world is not an exception.

In the21st century, business women as entrepreneurs are the highest rising entrepreneurial
populations in the country. Women entrepreneurship has been recognized as an important
source of the economic process. They produce new employment themselves and others and
spring up with amazing solutions for society to management, organization and business
problems. They make a strong contribution to the economy in the well-being of the family
and communities, reducing poverty, and women's empowerment.

As it is said, Rom was not built in a day. The development of women in the business world is
a long process; it starts from the early centuries and reaches in modern India after going
through a lot of changes and transformations.

History

The concept of entrepreneur came into enlightenment in the 19th century especially the term
"women entrepreneurs". The story of entrepreneurship development begun in ancient India.
Entrepreneurship basically incorporates the function of seeing investment and producing
opportunity, organizing an enterprise to undertake ventures on production and service.

Considering the participation of women in ancient India, it is found that the Rig Vedic Age
women were the co-partners in life. Study indicates that Indian woman enjoyed a high status
during the early Vedic period surpassing contemporary civilizations. The traditional role of a
Hindu wife was precisely laid down in Hindu Literature. In earlier societies, women's role
was limited to family; they played an effective role as homemaker.

18th-19thCentury

During the mid18th century, Indian women used to own certain businesses like retail shops,
and small handloom businesss and more. During the 18th and 19th centuries, more women
came out from under the domination of society's limits and began to rise into the public eye.
But before the 20th-century women were running a business as a way of supplementing
income.

In modern India, though during British era reforms have been made to improvise the status of
women, it was only after independence, they enjoyed privileges. According to the
constitution, women as similar to men, and various provisions are introduced for upliftment.

20thCentury

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 In the early 20s, the involvement of women and their contribution were pretty noticeable. The
figure of businesswomen has expanded, mainly in the 1990s. Women came forward to utilize
modern techniques, investments, finding a niche in the market and creating sizable
employment or other.

The Industrial Policy Resolution of 1991 has highlighted the need to grow women
entrepreneurship programs. As per the 1981Census Report, there were 1.5 lakhs self-
employed women in India that were 5.2%of the total self-employed people of the country.
According to Government of India reports, "Women start small-scale industries exclusively
run by a female, there are more than 2, 95,680 business women claiming 11.2% of total
2.64million entrepreneurs in the country during 1995-96.

Multifarious factors like urbanization, technological advancement and educational status of

women have transformed their conditions. The presence of women in economic development
in the unorganized sector, organized sector, self-employment, and entrepreneurship is
encouraging.

The status and role of women have changed rapidly. The thoroughly domesticated ladies who
could not think beyond the welfare of their families now awakened to action. They have a
great desire to progress that is awakening of their dormant individuality. Women hold enough
talent and skills to occupy predominate positions.

With the introduction of liberalization, privatization, and globalization in 1991, the Indian
economy has been working through a radical change. Woman entrepreneurs are gaining
prominent importance, and they are finically supported by the banks and encouragement by
family. Apart from vocational education to moment to climb the stairs of success

Present Day

In the contemporary world, there exist a plethora of successful business women entrepreneurs
in different fields in India. They are performing well and scraping their success stories.
Government has also introduced numerous schemes like National Skill Development Policy
and National Skill Development Mission to bring skill training, vocational education, and
entrepreneurship program for the emerging workforce. However, entrepreneurship
development and skill training is not the only responsibility of the government and therefore
other stakeholders need to shoulder the responsibility.

According to the Hindu scriptures, women are the embodiment of "Shakti". But in actual life,
they are treated as Abla. Women are leaving the workforce in favour of working at home. Not
to be a homemaker but as employment-creating business owners. The rising participation of
women entrepreneurs has transformed the demographic characteristics of the business sand
economic growth of the country. Businesses owned by female power are playing a more
active role in society and the economy, inspiring academics to focus on this interesting
phenomenon.

Here, there are top women entrepreneurs in a different business sphere of India.

 Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw (Chairman & MD, Biocon Ltd.)

 Indra Nooyi (CFO, Pepsico)
 Shahnaz Husain (Herbal Beauty Queen)
 Naina Lal Kidwai (Group General Manager & Country Head–HSBC,India)
 Ekta Kapoor (JMD & Creative Director, Balaji Telefilms),
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 Chanda Kochar (MD & CEO, ICICI Bank)
 Jyoti nayak (President, Shri Mahila Griha Udyog Lijjat Papad)
 Preetha Reddy (MD, Apollo Hospitals)

While innovation, entrepreneurship, science, and technology activities are today increasingly
being dominated by women in India, there still exist significant gaps before women can
achieve parity with men. Women entrepreneurs mainly suffer gender-based hurdles at the
initial phase of their businesses such as marital status, discriminatory property, and
inheritance laws and also cultural practices; access to formal finance mechanisms; restricted
mobility and access to information and networks, etc.

Though, the globe, as well as varied developmental organizations, is actively endeavouring

promotion of women entrepreneurs through numerous schemes, incentives, and promotional
measures. But the availability of finance and other facilities like land and industrial support is
often constrained by restrictions that do not account for practical realities. Funding facility is
not available for the field in which women are mainly involved. Here there are major
obstacles that women face in their success path:

 Lack of Education and Knowledge

 Short Of Self-Confidence
 Market Risks
 Socio-Cultural Barriers
 Capital Amount
 Male Dominated Society and more

In terms of growth, there needs to be an increase into his quality and quantity of investors, the
government needs to still continue reducing the administrative burden on women
entrepreneurs and connect with their agencies to make sure that required resources are
directed where they are needed.

Earlier, the role of women entrepreneurship was limited to only in handloom and handicraft
but present-day, their aspects have broadened into different industries including hospitality,
salon business, incense stick making, candle making, etc.

Empower Woman Entrepreneurs in India:

These are some outstanding ways to encourage women entrepreneurs:

 Consider women as specific target group for all developmental programmers.

 Better educational facilities and schemes government part
 Effective training programme on management skills for women community
 Encourage women's participation in decision-making.
 Vocational training for production process and production management
 Skill development polytechnics and industrial training institutes
 Training on professional competence and leadership skill

Many women entrepreneurs have entered in trade with low capital, lack of technical
knowledge, and working in production of soaps, detergents, ready-made instant food
products as well as pickles, spices, papad, manufacturing of wooden product, salon
business, typewriting centre, job contracts for packaging of products and distribution
and household provision etc successfully.

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 Policies and Schemes for Business Women

Presently, government is running 27 schemes for women to empower them in business world.
Some of them are given below:

 Integrated RuralDevelopment Programme (IRDP)

 Khadi And VillageIndustries Commission (KVIC)
 Training of RuralYouth for Self-Employment (TRYSEM)
 Prime Minister„sRojgar Yojana (PMRY)
 Assistance to RuralWomen in Non-Farm Development (ARWIND)
 schemes
 Trade RelatedEntrepreneurship Assistance and Development (TREAD)
 Working Women„s Forum
 Indira MahilaKendra
 Mahila SamitiYojana
 Mahila Vikas Nidhi
 Micro CreditScheme
 Womens DevelopmentCorporations (WDCs)
 Marketing ofNon-Farm Products of Rural Women (MAHIMA)
 EntrepreneurialDevelopment programme (EDPs)
 Management Development progammes
 Indira Mahila Yojana
 Rashtriya MahilaKosh
 SIDBI„s MahilaUdyam Nidhi

Future

Women have become equal participants in various respects at all levels of society. There are
women that have shown into the industrial sector and earned both name and fame in and
outside the country. The future will see more female powers venturing into a different field.
It will lead to income generation and a greater sense of fulfilled among them.

DIGITAL 2024: INDIA

The state of digital in India in 2024

Here are DataReportal’s essential headlines for digital adoption and use in India in early
2024:

 There were 751.5 million internet users in India at the start of 2024, when internet
penetration stood at 52.4 percent.

 India was home to 462.0 million social media users in January 2024, equating
to 32.2 percent of the total population.

 A total of 1.12 billion cellular mobile connections were active in India in early 2024,
with this figure equivalent to 78.0 percent of the total population.

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Population of India in 2024

The population of India stood at 1.44 billion in January 2024.

Data shows that India’s population increased by 13 million (+0.9 percent) between early
2023 and the start of 2024.

48.4 percent of India’s population is female, while 51.6 percent of the population
is male.

At the start of 2024, 36.6 percent of India’s population lived in urban centres,
while 63.4 percent lived in rural areas.

India’s population by age

The median age of India’s population is 28.4.

Here’s how India’s total population breaks down by age group:

 7.9 percent is between the ages of 0 and 4.

 13.3 percent is between the ages of 5 and 12.
 8.7 percent is between the ages of 13 and 17.
 12.5 percent is between the ages of 18 and 24.
 16.7 percent is between the ages of 25 and 34.
 14.4 percent is between the ages of 35 and 44.
 11.2 percent is between the ages of 45 and 54.
 8.1 percent is between the ages of 55 and 64.
 7.2 percent is aged 65 and above.

Internet use in India in 2024

There were 751.5 million internet users in India in January 2024.

India’s internet penetration rate stood at 52.4 percent of the total population at the start of
2024.

Kepios analysis indicates that internet users in India increased by 19

million (+2.6 percent) between January 2023 and January 2024.

For perspective, these user figures reveal that 683.7 million people in India did not use the
internet at the start of 2024, suggesting that 47.6 percent of the population remained
offline at the beginning of the year.

Social media statistics for India in 2024

DataReportal’s figures show that there were 462.0 million active social media user
identities in India in January 2024.

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The number of social media users in India at the start of 2024 was equivalent
to 32.2 percent of the total population, but it’s important to stress that social media users
may not represent unique individuals (see our detailed notes on data to learn why).

Meanwhile, data published in the ad planning tools of top social media platforms indicates
that there were 383.0 million users aged 18 and above using social media in India at the
start of 2024, which was equivalent to 38.1 percent of the total population aged 18 and
above at that time.

More broadly, 61.5 percent of India’s total internet user base (regardless of age) used at
least one social media platform in January 2024.

At that time, 31.4 percent of India’s social media users were female,
while 68.6 percent were male.

Mobile connections in India in 2024

Data from GSMA Intelligence shows that there were 1.12 billion cellular mobile
connections in India at the start of 2024.

However, note that many people around the world make use of more than one mobile
connection – for example, they might have one connection for personal use, and another
one for work – so it’s not unusual for mobile connection figures to significantly exceed
figures for total population.

GSMA Intelligence’s numbers indicate that mobile connections in India were equivalent
to 78.0 percent of the total population in January 2024.

The number of mobile connections in India increased by 23 million (+2.1 percent)

between the start of 2023 and the start of 2024.

Source : Digital 2024: India report

Women empowerment refers to providing the women economical, social and educational
rights, without any kind of discrimination based on gender, class, religion or social status. It is
an essential prerequisite for the development and progress of a nation.

Women Empowerment today, has become the most discussed topic around the
world. In basic terms, it means to diminish the gender gap and providing equal
opportunities and rights to men and women.

In India, women have always been subjected to acts of physical violence and mental
tortures since centuries. They are raped, physically assaulted, subjected to mental
harassment, killed for dowry, experience workplace discrimination, paid less than
men for the same job, not send to school, etc. This suppression of women in all the
spheres of life is a major hindrance to the progress of the nation.

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Most of the work done by women in India is unpaid and is in the unorganized sector.
Women in India constitute 49% of the agriculture workforce though they hold even
less than 2% of the land. Almost half of the women in rural India don’t have a bank
account in their own name and a few of them have a valuable asset in their name.

Women’s contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in India is at 17%, much
lower than the global average of 37%. Nearly 54% of criminal offenses in India
involve women and it is also reported that at national capital Delhi, over 90% of
women have experienced some kind of physical or sexual offense in public places.

The government of India is making progress by enacting new laws and implementing
them, safeguarding the interests of women. The society, as well as other government
and private organizations, must come forward to empower women.