In India, women-led start-ups face gender hurdle when seeking funding
- Indian businesswomen face unequal access to capital, with female entrepreneurs who do approach potential investors more likely to be rejected
- Women-led businesses face an unmet credit gap of more than US$11.4 billion, according to the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank’s private sector arm
When Indian businesswoman Aditi Bhutia Madan recalls her childhood in Darjeeling, she remembers pine forests, Himalayan sunrises and her grandmother’s momos – the savoury dumplings that years later inspired her to launch her own company.
A former MasterChef India contestant, Madan was confident of her cooking skills but she did not know how to access formal financing to grow her Yangkiez By MomoMami brand – a major hurdle for many female entrepreneurs in India.
For years, Madan ran the gauntlet of loan sharks demanding exorbitant interest rates or demanding a stake in her business.
“There were a lot of challenges … First, because you’re a woman,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
That changed when Madan, who is in her mid-40s, joined thousands of women entrepreneurs in the Women StartUp Programme (WSP) at NSRCEL, a business incubator at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, which gives participants training in business skills including the art of pitching for financing.
After presenting her first pitch on the reality show Shark Tank India, she secured 7.5 million Indian rupees (US$91,000) from investors for capacity building and infrastructure development at her company’s production units.
