Female entrepreneurs in India
Frauen in Indien bessern mit dem Lohn für ihre Arbeit nicht nur das Einkommen ihrer Familien auf. Viele gründen ihr eigenes Unternehmen und werden damit zu einem ernst zu nehmenden Wirtschaftsfaktor.
In 1976, Rajni Bector, a young housewife in the town of Ludhiana, in Northern India, began making handchurned ice cream in her garden. Her husband loaned her the equivalent of €227, which launched her baking business on a rollercoaster ride that was to last four decades. At €61.4 million, Mrs. Bector’s Food Specialties had one of the best public offerings of 2020.
Another female-led Indian company on course to make an outstanding market debut this year has become a household name for urban Indian women. Founded by investment banker Falguni Nayar in 2012, e-commerce beauty retailer Nykaa (the name translates as “heroine”) is now a market giant in India.
Bector and Nayar have created huge corporate successes: they represent Indian female entrepreneurship, a force to be reckoned with. It’s assumed that women — especially in a developing country such as India — step out of their homes only to supplement the family income. While this may be true in some cases, India has a complex social structure, where multiple truths exist at the same time. One of those is that Indian women love to be their own boss, regardless of their economic and social status.
I’ll look closer to home for examples. My mother, Swapna, who is now 74, grew up in a family of very modest means. With natural financial intelligence, she had a successful career in one of India’s largest public-sector banks. Then, instead of retiring, she launched her own handcrafted gemstone jewellery business at the age of 50. Another example: Annu (Aradhana) was our housemaid, a highschool dropout. Ten years later, she married a tailor and turned his little shop into a successful business printing books and holding tailoring workshops across small-town India for wannabe businesswomen, often uneducated.
Microfinancing programmes in India favour women because they seldom default on payments, unlike men, who often turn to alcohol at their first failure or have unrealistic business plans. Armed with common sense and the ability to work hard and to stay focused and determined, countless mini versions of Bector and Nayar can be found throughout India’s cities and villages. No matter who it affects — from tech mavens to gritty street food vendors — the entrepreneurship keeda (bug) bites hard.