New Delhi, Mar 15: The number of women entrepreneurs in India is on the rise and their startups, many of whom are in the booming e-commerce space, are showing the way for gender parity at workplace with some having as much as 50 per cent female staff, according to experts.
Women account for nearly half of the employable workforce but not all companies have such high levels of gender parity. As entrepreneurship, once considered 'a man's cup of tea', sees a sea change with many women taking the plunge, these new-age start-ups are seen encouraging female participation.
From Lijjat Papad, Amul or other micro-finance funded small home-based businesses, women have been at the forefront but this trend has slowly spilled over to white-collar jobs as well. Of late, women are also making inroads into senior management roles in many businesses.
With startups like Zivame, Embibe, Grabhouse, The Lebel Corp and LimeRoad among others, they are making their presence felt in the online space too.
"The boom of technology, internet, and mobile has only helped Indian entrepreneurs in general to build more scalable businesses. And that has helped women entrepreneurs! And I think that has significantly changed the landscape," talent assessment and analytics platform Jombay Founder Suruchi Wagh said adding 50 per cent of the workforce in Jombay comprises of women.
"Extensive exposure and equal opportunities are increasing the trend of women in India becoming entrepreneurs as they compete with their male counterparts either during the education or during the employment," executive search firm GlobalHunt MD Sunil Goel said.
"We can see many examples of budding women entrepreneurs who are challenging the perception of business being 'a man's cup of tea'.
"These women are breaking the shackles of traditional Indian women and starting a business of their own," Pankhuri Shrivastava Co-Founder Grabhouse.com, a community-based online exchange for finding rented accommodation said.
Around 40 per cent of employees in Grabhouse are women.
Commenting on this, LabourNet, a social enterprise which enables livelihood through vocational education co-founder and CEO Gayathri Vasudevan said, "Nationwide women across various arena are opening up to entrepreneurial opportunities and challenges, as the impetus level from government has dramatically risen with several women oriented schemes and policies."
The glass ceiling mind-set doesn't exist in the new age companies, as compared to large and traditional firms and the ratio of women employees among start-up is encouraging. About 40 per cent of staff at LabourNet are women.
According to a study by CoCubes.com, an online hiring assessment firm 97.2 per cent of women aspire for higher responsibility at work place whereas the percentage of men who were found to be responsible was little less 95.6 per cent.
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