Women startups lag as Hyderabad set for Global Entrepreneurship Summit

Hyderabad: The Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES 2017), which gets underway later this month in the city, will revolve around women as the core theme of the conclave is female entrepreneurship, but the current population of stratups founded by women is not so encouraging, with just 17 per cent of startups started globally having a female founder.

However, experts paint a better future, saying women entrepreneurs are bound to increase in coming years thanks to gender diversity efforts initiated in all spheres by the governments and global bodies.

On November 28, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to inaugurate the three-day GES 2017 whose core theme is “Women First, Prosperity for All”. As its theme suggests, the Summit will highlight the critical role women play in fostering global growth and prosperity.

However, a global study by technology website Tech Crunch estimated that 43,008 startups were founded worldwide between 2009 and 2017. Of these companies, just 6,791, or 15.8 per cent, have at least one woman founder.

The other interesting take-away from the study is that women-founded startups in a calendar year increased from nine per cent of the total in 2009 to 17 per cent in 2013, clocking an annual average growth of eight per cent.

But the percentage remained flat thereafter with startups founded by women continuing at 17 per cent during January-March period this year. In India, the scenario is more discouraging with some saying that just 10-15 per cent of Indian startups have a female founder.

"Yes, the representation of women entrepreneurs is relatively low in India compared some developed economies. I don't think it's more than 10-15 per cent," Satya Narayanan R, Executive Chairman of New Delhi-based CL Educate.

A startup entrepreneur himself, Narayanan who also founded Careerlauncher.com said that women entrepreneurs were however getting a lot of attention these days. “We will see surprising results in next five years. Already, there is a good representation of women in angel networks, venture funds, etc. But it should go up,” he said.

However, T-Hub, a world-class incubation centre launched by the Telangana government under public-private partnership, claims it has a better representation of women in its startup ecosystem. “About 20 per cent of startups in T-Hub are founded by women. But we would love to have more,” Srinivas Kollipara, Chief Operating Officer, T-Hub, told The Hans India.

Currently, T-Hub has 120 startups in its incubator. It mentors another 30 startups through corporate programmes and 10 more in every batch through international tie-ups. “In a year, we directly handle 200 startups and mentor another 300 indirectly. Nearly 20 per cent of these startups are set up by women and their areas of focus spread across all segments from waste management to virtual reality,” he said.

Further, T-Hub is taking up lots of initiatives to encourage more women to establish startups. “But there is a fundamental issue. It has to start from the education system itself. We need more women getting into engineering colleges and into leadership roles too,” Kollipara said.

Will the events like GES encourage more women to take up the path entrepreneurship? Narayanan replied in the affirmative. “The global summit will accelerate the growth process of women-founded startups. We should see it that startups set up by women should account for 33 per cent of the total,” he observed.

He suggested that angel and venture capital funds should allocate a part of their funds to the startups founded by enterprising girls and women. “Besides, the governments should bring out policy initiatives supporting women entrepreneurs.

That way, more number of women will take the path of entrepreneurship,” Narayanan explained, further pointing that women being natural multitaskers would bring valuable inputs for nurturing a startup.

By P Madhusudhan Reddy