MPW 2022: 'Women entrepreneurs must overcome internal battles, take risks and break the stereotypes'

Women entrepreneurs in India are still very few in numbers -  with some reports suggesting that just over 20% of MSMEs are owned by women entrepreneurs in India. However, 50% of India's start-up ecosystem is empowered by women in some way. Speaking on this very subject were Meena Ganesh, Co-founder & Chairperson, Portea Medical  and Ameera Shah, MD, Metropolis Healthcare at Business Today’s 'Most Powerful Women' (MPW) 2022 awards event in Mumbai on Wednesday.

Meena Ganesh, Co-founder & Chairperson, Portea Medical said: “My husband and I, have a foundation, and we are trying to help rural women become entrepreneurs. They're not afraid. You should see the guts that they have. We went to villages of Rajasthan, my God; they are so bold. They are not scared. I don't think women are scared. It's all of us creating that little bit of pressure on them saying, you know this is scary, don’t do this.” She continued saying, while they were scared, those women were able to overcome their fear because they don't have a choice. “When you're right at the bottom, and you're pushed into probably penury versus here's an opportunity I can bring up my family better and so on. You're willing to take the risk many of us in our family more comfortable lives, less able to take the risk. Perhaps the men are expected to take more risk and women are not. We take the shield of that and sit under that. But really there is no reason why women cannot take this or do not have the ability or the courage to take the risk.”

Echoing the sentiment, Ameera Shah, MD, Metropolis Healthcare said, “The way women are brought up in India, certainly from a conditioning standpoint, we're always pushed towards safety were pushed towards taking the easier the safer path. It could be simple things like come home at eight o'clock at night, take a certain role take a certain job, if you invest this money and start something if you get married, what will happen when you have a child what will happen. There's just too many doubts around us all the time. And our ecosystem is constantly putting doubts in our head about how we will manage, how we will balance, the great question of work life balance, who just put to us every day, if you know infuses a lot of doubt in the system.”

Shah added that the biggest question she feels entrepreneurs who are female have faced when compared to male entrepreneurs is this internal battle of how to manage and take that risk? “Entrepreneurship is about uncertainty. It's about every day not knowing exactly how things are going to plan work out. It's not predictable. There's no clear path ahead and having the ability to face that uncertainty every day and finding your own coping mechanism to not let that anxiety overwhelm us, but be analytical and think through all the different scenarios,” said Shah.

Both Ganesh and Shah are the winners of the Business Today’s MPW 2022 Awards.

Also Read: MPW 2022: 'WPL will change the perception of women’s cricket,' says Jhulan Goswami