‘ Women can run businesses as successfully as men’

World Entrepreneur Day is dedicated to creating awareness of the importance of entrepreneurship. Indeed, it is the entrepreneur who takes the initiative to start and operate a venture to make it profitable.

It is the entrepreneur who innovates, creates employment opportunities and contributes to the economic growth of the country. I would like to dedicate this World Entrepreneur Day to women entrepreneurs. Nearly four decades ago, when I started my career, I felt strongly that women have the potential to be successful in the business world.

It was like a latent force that had not really emerged. But, the last three decades have seen women in India stepping out of their homes to make a career. In fact, they have made a mark in every field, including the business world. As a woman entrepreneur myself, I can say that women are not inferior in any way when it comes to starting a business, managing it or making it successful.

In fact, my success has been acknowledged internationally, when I received the World’s Greatest Woman Entrepreneur Award from the New York based Success magazine.

I also became a Harvard Case Study in Brand Creation and now I am a Subject at Harvard on “Emerging Markets.” It is also heartening to see the number of women entrepreneurs in India steadily increasing. I firmly believe that a woman has the qualities to be a successful entrepreneur.

For one thing, while managing her different roles of wife, housewife, mother and career woman efficiently, she has learnt the values of timemanagement, patience and handling budgets. She has learnt how to integrate and nurture.

Women have the courage, inner strength, foresight and capacity for hard work, all of which are necessary to succeed as entrepreneurs. In fact, they are also no less than men when it comes to intelligence, talents and creativity. For a creative person, the world of business offers many avenues, because creativity leads to innovative ideas.

Translating them into practical terms is what business is all about. In fact, a creative person will find greater freedom to express her ideas and innovations in her own enterprise. With entrepreneurship, the sky is the limit, provided one has relentless determination to excel and the ability for sheer hard work.