Women and entrepreneurship: an uphill struggle

This article sheds light on dynamic businesswomen in India and how they have chosen to make decisions that have been socially relevant and impactful.

To all of you who are still blissfully ignorant of what double charging is, I suggest you take this time to tune in to the reality of women. Of women and their stories that show triumph, courage, perseverance, kindness, love and above all, passion. When we talk about women in India, we mostly ignore the second shift (another commonly given name for double loading).

Unpaid work is a very typical social construction and, in most cases, it is rudely called “a woman’s duty”. Because if they are not chained to the social conventions of domestic oppression, they are accused of being “unladylike” (the horror) and we all know that that is not a label that Indian women should strive for.

This is an ode to women, of women who have consciously chosen to overcome those struggles, beyond all accusations, flying over all offensive comments and most importantly, constantly giving Indian society an existential crisis. Make no mistake, this is not just for women who have become successful entrepreneurs.

It is for women who have been employed and unemployed, for financial independence and for fighting financial oppression, for changing social norms and for fighting, for being amazing not only for choosing to exist, but for living, seeking and actively fight. and winning.

1- Aditi Gupta

How many times have you been embarrassed about menstruating? How many times do you check “that area” in “those days?” Aditi Gupta has answered our prayers. Menstruation is as taboo as women’s rights in India, as it is better to pretend that both do not exist. Aditi Gupta has made it her mission to clear the darkness surrounding this common problem by introducing Menstrupedia.

It is a friendly guide for women to stay active, healthy and mindful during periods. Its aim is to explore this topic from various points of view: hygiene, conscience, feminism and culture, to name a few.

2- Anu Sridharan

Anu Sridharan had this insatiable thirst to combine technology and society so that we can harness the full potential of being informed. She founded NextDrop with a simple vision: “we want to rid the world of its water problems.”

With rapid urbanization and development constantly resulting in water scarcity, its technology platform helps people stay on top of access to water, the quality and quantity associated with it. They use real-time data to disperse information on the status of water services, inconsistencies with the supply pattern and supply time, etc.

3- Padmaja Ruparel

Padmaja founded Indian Angel Network in 2009 and since then it has become an integral part of the business eco-sphere in India. In 2009, he saw an opportunity to tap into a culture that did not support or finance entrepreneurship.

“Venture capitalists started investing in startups in India more than a decade ago, but they always invested the money raised abroad. The trend is changing, but still venture capitalists raise money mainly abroad. This amount was huge and as an early stage startup I wouldn’t know what to do with those huge sums of money and venture capitalists wouldn’t even invest. So I thought early stage investments were a gap and, therefore, I started IAN, “says Padmaja.

4-SocialCops

Prukalpa founded SocialCops together with Varun Banka in hopes of using data to solve critical global challenges. Having had investment banking experience, he realized the impact data had when it came to financial banking. However, he continued to draw parallels about how healthcare, education, crime, the environment, and the development sector in general did not have relevant data to leverage in the same way. Interesting enough, Crowdfunding helped make this project come true.

We hope these 5 women have already started to inspire you. Being your own boss was never an easy job; Furthermore, with society repressing it on all fronts, the journey will definitely not be easy. Nothing worthwhile is easy, let’s all live to beat the odds and stay rooted in our vision.

“We learned that governments and other organizations have been collecting a ton of data from citizens across the country on different topics. The problem is not that there is no data; it is that the data is really difficult to access and use. It exists in numerous governments. websites, which are difficult to locate and navigate. Once you access the data, it is difficult to use because it is inconsistent and unstructured. An important component of our work has been to find all these obscure government data sets, clean them, and compare them with other data sets to make them reliable and usable, “he says.

5- Elsa Marie D’Silva

If every 20 minutes someone is raped and not all rapes are reported, can you imagine the number of women who are harassed in the streets every day? ”, Asks Elsa Marie De’Silva”. It is this horrible thought that caused Elsa, Surya and Saloni to establish a safe city. It is a GIS (Geographic Information System) mapping and uses open source technology to facilitate information mapping. It is a documenting platform that translates personal experiences of sexual abuse and harassment in public places into hotspots corresponding to location-based trends. Women can choose to remain anonymous while reporting, the main focus is on reporting and raising awareness.