Is It Easy For Women In India To Raise Funding For Their Startups?
The Problem
Earlier this year, the Elephant in The Valley survey threw up sharp numbers and true personal accounts of gender discrimination and how the world’s largest hub for innovation and technology remains plagued by sexism. The problem with the numbers, is that they’re not simply uncomfortable, they’re alarming. The numbers have taken into consideration skilled women, good at their jobs, actively pursuing opportunities they are qualified to handle. And yet, the ratios could make the best of us squirm in our seats.
This is not fresh news. But what adds to the worry is the fact that most men are not aware of the problem. A problem that refuses to go away. We have done our due diligence on sexism in Silicon Valley, as much as is possible while sitting across the pond from it.Stories of unwanted sexual advancement, repeated questions regarding marital status and family situations, female employees being asked to smile more, and the nightmarish TechCrunch Disrupt incident where ‘Titstare’ was allowed to present, are skin-curling. More importantly, they push women ten eras back in time.
Of all the articles written and observations made on Ellen Pao vs Kleiner Perkins, the most notable commentaries can be found in the ‘Comments’ sections. We systematically eliminated the trolls and used our carefully honed stalking skills on all the commentators. We were left with people who were educated techies, coders and business owners, and strangely, all male. Apparently, the majority of them do not see why it is discriminatory, and irrelevant, to ask a female interviewee about her plans regarding marriage and pregnancy.
The Ecosystem
In 2016 itself, India has emerged as the 3rd biggest startup hub in the world. The Indian startup ecosystem is a thriving one growing at an accelerated pace, wherein the number of startups had grown to 4200 and $2 Billion USD was raised as funding, in 2015 alone.
My co-founder and I, both new to entrepreneurship, have been doing our homework, albeit a bit prematurely, on scaling. It has been interesting (and inspiring) to note that a growing number of Indian women are at the helm of new ventures in India. However, the disappointment sets in when we scratch the surface a little harder and realize that only 9 out of 100 new entrepreneurs in India are actually women. That is undoubtedly a harsh ratio to swallow.
The FEI (Female Entrepreneurship Index) scores for 2015 published by GEDI, underlines the scarcity of women in business, by revealing India to be one of the countries whose institutions are least supportive of female high-growth entrepreneurs.
There could be a multitude of reasons why women are not getting an equal share of the pie — cultural and social conditioning, lack of financial or family or community support, restricted access to appropriate resources and so on. But we wondered if women founders who’ve successfully raised funding for their ventures also faced the issue that most women face today at the workplace — the problem with being a “girl boss”.
Sairee Chahal of Sheroes, wrote an article back in 2014, relaying her experience as an entrepreneur trying to raise money for the company and how Indian investors need to be vigilant against importing the mistakes that are rampant in the Valley. We asked four more entrepreneurs on the lessons they’ve learnt while building empires of their own.
Read the full interview here.
The original interview with the following Founders and CEOs appeared on Huffington Post on 2nd October, 2016. Read the full article.
- Kanika Tekriwal, JetSetGo
- Ritu Srivastava, Obino
- Naiyya Saggi, BabyChakra
- Smriti Modi, The Itch List
