Women take huge responsibilities in their life and are blessed with a wonderful heart to care for all. However, responsibilities and obvious changes in their personal lives sometimes create hindrances to their career growth. This ‘great at heart and strong in mind’ gender with versatile qualities often turn this challenge into an opportunity and establish themselves as a business entrepreneur to materialize their dreams of becoming financially independent, and parallelly opening scope for others.

Women though capable of multitasking and intelligently driving a business, find it hard to get the chance of upskilling themselves, hence lack confidence to boldly make decisions and try out any new venture mostly in developing countries like India.

Women in general are bestowed with the highest human qualities like patience, hard work, tenacity, conceptualization, and innovativeness.  The most important elements of intelligence be it being practical, analytical or being creative are all the natural possessions of a woman which she learns through her life experiences.

The socio cultural, economic, and political situations play useful role in deciding whether a lady would choose to take up a business and if chosen what type of business would she prefer to do.

In recent times, due to great shift in the social concepts, hierarchy, orientation and general acceptance and awareness, women have emerged more strongly as entrepreneur and their choice of business transformed from mere minimal earning through kitchen extension to successfully taking up and driving technically advanced businesses that contribute greatly to the economy of the nation.

The Government of India and many corporates are supporting women through training programs and economic assistance to empower them and to promote an inclusive growth.

Women entrepreneurs currently contribute a huge portion into the Indian and world economy. Businesses run by women are growing at fast pace with more efficient women willing to take greater operational risks.

What is exactly meant by Women Entrepreneurship?

Women who come up with innovative ideas, plan, make preparations and step to initiate a business or adopt an existing business to earn for self and provide employment to others while running the business independently are the women entrepreneurs and the process involved is known as women entrepreneurship.

According to the Government of India, women enterprise is the enterprise which is managed by one or group of women entrepreneurs in proprietary interests where they should have a minimum of 51% share capital.

The common problems faced by women entrepreneurs

• Short of fund to run a business.
• General financial trouble.
• Hitch due to family complications and responsibilities.
• Dependence on middlemen for marketing and raw material supplies. The cost for hiring a middleman is sometimes too high and the overall earning diminishes.
• Lack of technological knowhow and inaccessibility to technical trainings.
• Dearth of family support and self-confidence. 
• Gender bias in the society.
• High competition.
• Safety issues.

How the Government of India is empowering women?

The Government of India understands the importance of women entrepreneurship and strongly believes that a family or a nation may see an improvement in social and financial status when women participate actively in every sphere and moves forward with determination.

The Government runs training program to upskill women, raise their awareness and make them self-confident and independent through such initiatives.

Mahila Vikas and Mahila Udyam Nidhi are some of the programs to provide financial support to women.

Government schemes supporting women

If you are a woman who is self-motivated , high in ideas to start a business and looking for some ways that can help you make your dream come true, then follow the list below that will guide you with the existing helpful Government schemes.

• Stree Shakti Package is a scheme started by SBI to support women entrepreneurs who participated in the Entrepreneurship Development Program (EDP).
• Mudra Yojana Scheme provides loan to women entrepreneurs for small business and are available under Shishu, Kishore and Tarun plans based on the vastness and stage of the business.

The other schemes in tandem with the list above that might be helpful in supporting your venture are Assistance to Rural Women in Non-farm Development (ARWIND), Tread Related Entrepreneurship Assistance and Development (TREAD), Women Development Corporation (WDC), etc.

SIDBI supports the EDP initiatives by the state agencies.

The industries in general dominated by women

• Beauty parlour and beauty products
• Kitchen
• Pickles and papads
• Handicrafts
• Garments

Presently, women are found grabbing higher education, technically capable to take more risks and more aware and confident to run businesses that require high skills and strongly create a niche for themselves in all types of industries.

The successful women entrepreneurs

Women being flexible, energetic, goal oriented and tolerant are finding more space for themselves and contributing more in the present socio-economic scenario. The successful women entrepreneurs in different industries are the role models whose achievements inspire many in their life (irrespective of originating either of push or of pull factors) and have already concretized dreams of many others.

The untapped potentials of women are unleashing with a boom and the economy of India like many other countries is highly dependant on the women entrepreneurial businesses.

Some of the outstandingly great women who are highly successful and have highly impacted Indian economy and who should be considered as exemplar are Kiran Mazumdar Shaw (the founder of Biocon Ltd), Vandana Luthra (the founder of VLCC), Indra Nooyi (former CEO of Pepsi Co, currently board member of Amazon), Aditi Gupta (Author, Co-founder of Menstrupaedia) to name a few. Their success originated from outstandingly acquired skills, confidence and hard work shows that “nothing is impossible to achieve and can be accomplished if the heart is keen to reach”.

Some great business ideas to try at low investment

Do you like to dream high?

Our dream comes true when we put all our efforts to realize it.

If you ever thought of being an entrepreneur and work flexibly, try out your creativity and be independent then here are some small business ideas for you to endeavour-

• Be a wedding planner or an event planner and you can be sure to earn huge revenue and open opportunities for others
• Handmade goods sell, dress designing are some other areas where your creativity can help you earn and employ other women
• You may try photography
• Digital marketing service is an increasingly growing business area and can help you earn high and provide opportunity for others.
• Practice your hands out and be a writer. Authorpreneurs have the scope to earn utilizing their passion. Blogging or publishing ebooks are the additional scopes open for modern writers

Most importantly, if you give your full potential, if you remain motivated and upskill yourself in congruence with nurturing confidence and patience within self then you are sure to be a successful entrepreneur of tomorrow.

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