Female Entrepreneurs are increasingly being considered to be an important catalyst for economic growth and development in India. They are contributing substantially to employment generation and as such, female entrepreneurship has become an area of research over the past few years.
Every Entrepreneur faces many challenges, focusing on their level of education and socio-cultural constraints. They face them and overcome all of them on their own. In this article, we will learn about some of the most successful female entrepreneurs and their journey to become independent and successful.
1. Nishita and Nikita Baliarsingh
Nexus was founded by these two twin sisters in 2019 and they are building something incredible. They make bio-organic and biodegradable electric vehicles.
Initially, they both wanted to build electric vehicles but after doing a bit of research, they realized that India’s electric vehicles space is still a tough market to get into especially for an early-stage startup.
They could see that most Indian consumers weren’t impressed by electric vehicles. They took a long time to charge and their range isn’t that great. Also, India doesn’t have a native mind and refined lithium right now which makes Indian electric vehicles expensive because the lithium that’s in their batteries needs to be imported into India.
So, Nishita and Nikita decided to fix this. They thought if lithium isn’t a great option for India then maybe they can create an alternative kind of battery. These batteries use bio-organic nano-materials with fast regenerative properties. These batteries are also biodegradable and fully recyclable.
2. Suchita Salwan
Suchita Salwan started to write on little black book [LBB] which was initiated as a Tumbler blog first, in which she documented interesting places that she had discovered in Delhi.
She once said “It was me finding a way to make my life more interesting. It was a way for me to discover my city on my own.
By sharing these hidden gems with her followers, she was able to mass a pretty solid following. Eventually, LBB became a proper website and Suchita started to build a small team of employees, freelancers, and interns who would scour Delhi searching for interesting places that people could visit.
After a while, she realized that she wanted her company to be more than just a discovery website. So, in 2015 Dhruv Mathur joined her as a co-founder. Today more than 60000 brands showcase and advertise their products on LBB.
The platform also enables them to chat with their customers and access fully managed catalog, logistics, and payout services. LLB is used by 3 million consumers every month and has a presence across 8 Indian cities.
3. Shraddha Sharma
Shraddha founded Yourstory in 2008 after working for the Times of India and CNBC TV. According to her, a month before launching the Yourstory website she told the gathering of Entrepreneurs that she is going to start a venture that would tell stories of Entrepreneurs who are not superstars yet. But they have the spark, drive, and hope.
A Few Entrepreneurs said to do it. Most of the experts present said that it won’t work. But she decided to start up anyway. She was like the people with whom she was sharing the stories. Not yet the superstar but she had the spark, drive, and hope to become one.
For the first 7 years of building Yourstory shraddha and her team bootstrapped this start-up she said that part of this was because not a lot of investors were interested in funding a media and news start-up like Yourstory in the early days. But that also bootstrapping has made her the person she is today.
When you know you have to fend for yourself every inch of the way it gives you a different kind of grit and tenacity. In 2015 Yourstory did raise funds so that she could achieve her vision of making every story matter.
Today the story has been published in close to 60,000 stories of Indian Entrepreneurs and has helped more than 50,000 Entrepreneurs access networking and funding opportunities.
They also host India’s biggest and most popular startup submit tech sparks. They also have a section of their website dedicated to Women Entrepreneurs and change-makers called her story.
4. Upasana Taku
Upasana founded MobiKwik with Bipin Preet Singh in 2008. This start-up was founded before Paytm, free of charge or Google Pay. It was early in the digital payments and fintech space. So They had to do a lot of heavy lifting to educate the market.
People just didn’t trust the internet they wanted their money in cash not in some digital wallet. Mobikwik started as a prepaid recharge service.
In 2012 MobiKwik started to branch out allowing its users to pay for bills like electricity, insurance, and gas. They even set up a small shopping service where users could buy items from platforms like eBay using their MobiKwik wallets.
It was innovative as they were trying to add value for their users. Today they are a fintech company offering financial products like loans, gold investment, and mutual funds. They also have a payment gateway called Zaakpay. It is currently valued at 300 million dollars.
5. Divija Gokulnath
Divija co-founded BYJU’S as a platform to help students in their education and to make their learning process better. She started in 2015 by providing videos and lectures to support school education through the app. Soon it got in the eyes of the people through advertising and digital marketing.
After her education, she got an offer to teach students at BYJU’S for competitive exams and much more. She wanted to create a platform where the audience could easily understand and engage to know the concepts. It provides free access and has 13.5 million users today.
