Women Entrepreneurs Are Key To Building India’s Digital Future
There are approximately 63 million micro, small, and medium businesses in India, of which only around 20% are owned by women. This figure has jumped by almost 7% over the last ten years. While there is plenty of ground that remains to be covered, the massive digital acceleration, especially over the last 2-3 years, has unlocked a sea of new opportunities for women entrepreneurs and women-led businesses in the country.
Digital is fueling a new wave of women entrepreneurs
Latest trends from Meta platforms indicate that despite the challenges of the pandemic, a new wave of women entrepreneurs is emerging in India. From the last fiscal year, women-led micro, small and medium enterprises in India increased substantially by over 75 per cent to 859,000 units (in FY22), from 490,000 units. On Meta, we found that more than 60% of Instagram businesses in India who self-identify as women-owned and that nearly 50% of female-led businesses on Facebook in India were set up since the start of the pandemic. Additionally, more than 45% of Facebook groups related to entrepreneurship have been created by women since 2021.
Connected women are key to India’s economic growth
Women represent half the world’s population and half of its potential to grow, create opportunities, and build an economically resilient society. When women come online, they are able to multiply economic opportunities, set innovative ideas in motion, and become catalysts for social change. Everyday, we see numerous inspiring examples of how women entrepreneurs are growing their business, empowering other women and communities, and creating local jobs and employment.
Right after her graduation, Shubhika Jain founded a luxury personal care brand - RAS Luxury Oils - from her hometown in Raipur and is today supplying to some of the biggest hotel chains across the country, and to customers across the globe, growing 10x in the last 15 months on the back of digital and social media. Shubhika is passionate about empowering women, and that’s why more than 70% of RAS Luxury Oil’s workforce consists of women. Shubhika’s story is a powerful example of how women entrepreneurs from small towns in India are building businesses that have the potential to be scaled across India and globally.
Supporting the next generation of women entrepreneurs
While these are encouraging trends, we know that we need to create a stronger ecosystem for women to succeed as entrepreneurs. Among other things, timely business skills and access to working capital are crucial for any small business to grow. However, data from many studies shows that women entrepreneurs often do not have equal access to either business skilling or working capital when compared to their male counterparts.
As per a research by International Finance Corporation (World Bank Group), women-owned businesses are likely to face higher borrowing costs and may be required to provide collateral for a higher share of their loans than their male counterparts. This was despite the fact women-owned businesses showed greater profit margins than those of men.
At Meta, we are aware of the working capital challenges that entrepreneurs face and that’s why a few months ago we launched the Small Business Loans Initiative to enable business loans for our small business advertisers through third-party lenders. As part of this program, wholly or partly woman-owned businesses can get a special 0.2% reduction on the applied loan interest rate from the lender. This is in addition to the predefined interest range that the business will already be eligible for.
As more and more women-led businesses move online, we are also deeply committed to enabling business skilling support through our key programs. In fact, according to a Meta-commissioned Deloitte survey in 2020, 83% of women-led businesses reported they started using or increased their usage of a business profile/page on social media since the outbreak of COVID-19.
Every year, we see many women-led businesses participate in our free business skilling programs to grow their business. From ‘Advertiser Bootcamp Program’ provides advanced learning resources for SMBs so they can access vertical-based best practices available in English, Hindi, Bengali and Tamil, and ‘Managed Partners Program’ is focused on accelerating growth for mid-tier small businesses through custom support from trusted and trained third-party partners to ecosystem enablement programs such as the VC Brand Incubator Program that works with venture capital funds to scale young, invested brands, we are deeply committed to ensuring that small businesses get distinct support, designed to address their unique needs and goals.
Recently under our #SheMeansBusiness programme, we partnered with industry body FICCI to support five lakh women-led small businesses across India.
Empowering women for a better tomorrow
Women-led businesses have the potential to create 150-170 million jobs in India as per a Bain & Co report. According to the UN Women, ‘When more women work, economies grow’. By boosting women’s economic freedom, not only do we increase economic diversification and income equality, but we also help them create more jobs which will ultimately be pivotal for the economic and social growth of India.
*The author is Archana Vohra, Director, Small and Medium Businesses, India at Meta
