Women entrepreneurs bracing up for tech startups

Hyderabad Women are inherently patient planners, great task and money managers, such qualities an entrepreneur should possess to build and grow a startup, but hardly have these translated into getting funding support. Investors foresee a startup as successful if a woman founder presents business ideas related to beauty or food. Changing this mind set of investors has been a challenge, say women leading tech firms/startups.

The All India Survey on Higher Education Report (2020) indicates an increase in women’s enrollment in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) as a field of study. This has eventually led to an increase of women workforce in the technology and allied sectors. These experienced professionals are ultimately venturing out to start their business. Moreover, incubation centres at colleges are handholding students to convert ideas into successful startups. The matter in question here is what is holding back women from making it big.

Anu Acharya, founder, MapMyGenome, told Bizz Buzz that there are startups in med-tech, food-tech and others, the only issue is getting visibility.

“Normally startups get written about when they do something big. That is the challenge. In the last few years we have started to equate success with funding, but what matters more is if the business will sustain and thrive. Give some time and we will start seeing successes here too,” she said.

On the other hand, with unicorns going through turbulent phase these days, upcoming women entrepreneurs getting more business opportunities.

“Now, we are entering a new era. With unicorns falling flat on face, people are looking at building business the right way which means we will see more women now,” Acharya adds.

According to a report published in February 2023 by the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom), 18 per cent of startups in India are led by at least one woman founder or co-founder. In terms of technology-based startups also categorized under MSME’s, RBI survey of 1,246 startups finds 5.9 per cent of the participating startups were founded by only females in comparison to 55.5 per cent founded by only male founders. Only 38.6 per cent had both male and female as co-founders.

Chitralee Sarma, founder of Whatismygoal.com, calls for active participation of more entrepreneurs, including women in leadership positions, to further enhance the liveliness of the ecosystem. She maintains that more interactions are needed across the ecosystem for ideas to flow. NITI Aayog’s Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP) in a study mentioned that businesses with at least one female founder have a more inclusive work culture, employ three times more women than men and generate 10 per cent more cumulative revenue.

Acharya further informs that there is a miss in tangible number of women taking the lead. Hence, there are not enough examples. Secondly, funding for women founders is obviously low. “The overall statistics indicates that very few women can actually get funded. This is a deterrent for more women to come up. There are enough examples to say that women make good managers of money, but we don’t see that translating into funding,” she adds.

Aparna Bhogu, co-founder of Monitra Healthcare Pvt Ltd, has been in the industry for past seven years. She has received grant from a government agency and raised funds from private investors, up to the tune of Rs7.5 crore.

According to her, funding is not an easy process. “The experience is rigorous with multiple rounds of discussions and multiple documents to be presented. We do have investors in Hyderabad who are interested in funding and walking the journey with the startup. However, when compared to Bangalore, Mumbai, there is scope for lot more investors to actively participate in this city,” she said.

According to them, the investment community is not excited about sole founders, male or female. Investors prefer to have two founders to reduce the risk of an investment, they say. However, a bigger challenge that women entrepreneurs face is changing the investors mind set. Acharya informs that investors seal a deal with a woman entrepreneur associated with beauty, food and fashion as they foresee them to be successful ventures if run by a woman. “We were new in our industry. From an investor’s angle, maybe they had not seen such business idea. There is also some sort of investor bias based on past performance which needs to be addressed,” Acharya adds.

Indicating from her 23 years of entrepreneurial experience with investors, the founder of MapMyGenome suggests other women founders to tap government schemes and grants to build the startup gradually and when the venture earns revenue/profits, raise capital from investors to expand further.