Investing into women entrepreneurs to strengthen the entrepreneurship landscape of rural India

  June 14, 2024  |     Nidhi Bhasin

“Digital training has helped me empower and educate other women entrepreneurs about online transactions and it has facilitated business growth”, says Anita Desai, 35 years old, who runs a small-scale business in vegetable and dairy farming in Mewat, Haryana. This demonstrates that women entrepreneurs have the potential of creating a better tomorrow for everyone. We can’t afford to leave women entrepreneurs behind.  In doing so, we leave future generations behind as well. The ripple effect of women’s success contributes directly to the local economy and touches lives across their community. It is worth mentioning that when women entrepreneurs succeed, they are more likely to invest back into their families and communities at large. However, in the near term, women need to be provided a platform with equitable economic opportunities for further growth and development of the nation. Advancing women entrepreneurship through digital technologies and inclusion can create this platform. 

The key challenges 

Out of 100 entrepreneurs in India, only 7 are female, states the Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurs. The Google-Bain report also indicates that only 20% of businesses in the country are owned by women, while the 2021 report by the World Economic Forum shows a massive gender gap of 72% in India’s labor market. Despite their desire to achieve their goals and pursue entrepreneurial aspirations, women particularly in the rural areas don’t have an easy path to traverse when they begin their journeys. While for some getting financial assistance has been challenging, others face patriarchy issues. The pressure to stick to traditional gender roles is among the main challenges faced by women entrepreneurs. Often, they are asked to give up entrepreneurship and take up an easy profession that helps them focus more on family and children.

The other challenge is understanding government schemes. While the Government of India has made interventions for women to get credit access for starting their businesses, not all the resources and services are equally accessible to enterprises owned by women. This reflects in the poor quality and quantity of female entrepreneurship in India. Relevant schemes to promote entrepreneurship among women, enable in providing opportunities to women entrepreneurs to provide financial and technical assistance to women entrepreneurs or for business extension. 


The lack of women entrepreneurs’ access to digital technologies and digital literacy has also been very low. The gendered digital adoption divide is roughly 6 percent in high-income countries and as high as 82.5 percent in low-income countries. National Family Health Survey 2021 reports that only one in three women in India (33 percent) have ever used the internet, compared to more than half 57 percent of men and as per the OECD report, 54 percent of rural women in India do not own a phone. These factors suggest that technology empowerment is a major challenge faced by women entrepreneurs in India. Be it from accessing banking services to adopting digital transformation services to enhance and optimise their business efficiency, women entrepreneurs face more challenges than their male counterparts.

Paving the way to empower the women entrepreneurs from rural India for a digitally-enabled future

Entrepreneurship’s future directly showcases the nation’s future. Given the importance of developing the rural economy, the anticipated doubling of farmers’ income, and the provision of urban utilities in rural regions, we can confidently predict that the future of rural women entrepreneurship in India is bright. The future of rural management will be determined by including specific amendments in the ecosystem.

A recent research study by McKinsey Global Institute suggests that by 2025, India’s GDP may increase up to 18% over the business front just by providing equal work opportunities for women. Technology for good has certainly gained momentum lately and it is believed that connected women, empowered with access to technology processes, are key to a country’s economic growth. Women represent half the world’s population and they have potential to grow, create opportunities, and build an economically resilient society. 

Importance of government schemes for aspiring women entrepreneurs

While we need more investment and capacity-building to promote entrepreneurship among women, the first step is to ensure that they can access and benefit from the wide range of existing support that central and state governments provide. Identifying women as pillars of change, India has introduced a number of government schemes to support women-led enterprises especially from the rural areas. These include comprehensive schemes such as the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana (PMMY) all of which together take an integrated approach to addressing the most critical constraints faced by micro enterprises, especially those led by vulnerable groups such as women and social minorities. These schemes are uniquely placed to promote market-making interventions that encourage more financial institutions to offer higher-size credit and credit-plus services as a bundle of offerings to female entrepreneurs. Additionally, government schemes should also be available in multi-lingual platforms for easy accessibility for women entrepreneurs and address language barriers to critical information like these.

Making financial inclusion a reality for female business owners

Women’s financial inclusion can provide them with efficient tools and knowledge, leading to improved engagement in income-generating livelihood activities, economic empowerment, and social mobility. Financial inclusion can be a key driver of women’s economic empowerment in turn essential to achieving the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) on gender equality, which lies at the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Ownership of a bank account alone, however, does not translate to financial inclusion. There is considerable scope for MSMEs to gain from a more inclusive digital financial system. For example, fundamental elements including equipping women with tools to save money and access credit, shift of women MSME owners from cash-based to online transactions to save them money, onboarding entrepreneurs into e-commerce platforms through training and capacity building. Thus, with improved access to information regarding schemes and policies and creating an infrastructure and training facilities at communities, can make women conversant with digital apps, wallet, portals and e-commerce websites.

Entrepreneurship development of rural women through establishing resource centres for digital literacy

An initiative towards establishing digitally equipped resource centres with a focus on aspirational districts will also be ideal to enable socio-economic empowerment of women and nurture entrepreneurship. Resource centres equipped with digital assets like computers, online resources like subscriptions to informative pages/channels and physical resources can make digital tools accessible to the entire community. Communities will also be connected to appropriate government schemes and e-governance services in addition to receiving ample training in digital skills, soft skills, entrepreneurship and livelihood skills. 

Public Private Partnership models integral for rural women entrepreneurship development 

And finally, the potential of public-private partnership can lead to large-scale impact, boost MSME sector and address the challenges of sustainability, efficiency and inclusivity. As new technologies present a major opportunity to transform agricultural systems, every stakeholder must play a role in realizing this potential. This is where the significance of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) will be vital. Since the budget announcement of hi-tech services in agriculture through a PPP approach, there is a need of launching this initiative in mission mode. National and state governments can strengthen the dialogue with private stakeholder ecosystem and establish the PPP framework through consultations and evidence-based learning through pilots. Such collaborations intend to strengthen the women entrepreneurship ecosystem and enable accessibility of technology to reach the last mile.

Women entrepreneurs have a huge potential to play a crucial role in an emerging economy like India taking advantage of globalization and a technology-driven ecosystem. By 2030, an estimated 30 million women-owned MSMEs are expected to flourish in India, providing employment to nearly 150 million people. Leaving behind the perils of the Covid-19 pandemic, women entrepreneurship, in today’s digital age, is a very important tool for development in rural areas. Hence, the need to “invest in rural women” becomes imperative to provide them with social protection and agricultural information; close the digital divide and support women’s unpaid care and domestic work. If we can engage the potential of these women from rural areas, they would be phenomenal at running social enterprises driving sustainable development. The question that is of relevance here is how soon we can achieve this target?

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