START-UPS NO COUNTRY FOR WOMEN FOUNDERS

While India is third in the pecking order globally in the start-up ecosystem, women founders struggle to even get a start. Investors see them as less capable and hesitate to fund their ideas

- Mahima Sinha

 

Renu Negi, a young woman entrepreneur in Delhi, who also works with various early-stage start-ups 
in scaling up their businesses, has often found her own data analytics start-up pitch being rejected by investors for reasons she believes are mostly vague. 

She says that rather than providing substantive reasons for why her pitch did not meet funding criteria, investors frequently cite excuses like, “But you are too young a woman to handle a data start-up", “What will happen after you get married and have children?”, “You need to bring in a male co-founder". 

Deepika Loganathan, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of HaiVE AI, narrates her arduous journey. An early marriage (at 21 years) was the first hurdle. It was not until she relocated to Australia that she could co-found her start-up. She says that obtaining funding in India is difficult for women, making entrepreneurship a goal too far. 

Sadly, Negi and Loganathan are not alone in encountering gender bias. Despite India's position as the third-largest start-up ecosystem globally, women entrepreneurs continue to face challenges in getting funding. In a country where gender discrimination persists, overcoming societal barriers to pursue entrepreneurship is daunting. Experiencing gender bias when it comes to funding is yet another hurdle in the lonely struggle to make a mark in the professional world. 

While a cursory glance at data might suggest that the record low figures are due to the funding winter, a detailed analysis suggests that the number of women-founded start-ups has been declining for a decade; the current ratio of men-led tech start-ups and women-led tech start-ups stands at 245:1, which used to be 51:1 back in 2014.