The Times of IndiaTitle : To build their world-class companies, GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUNDSAuthor :Location :Article Date : 11/22/2015

A Few Days After Women's Entrepreneurship Day, TOI Finds That Gender Isn't A Barrier ToStarting Up, But Finding The Right Staff Remains A Challenge. And If There's One Change FemaleEntrepreneurs Want, It Is To See More Women Entering The Ecosystem

Men don't have to make as many adjustments as we doAnjana Reddy has never hired on the basis of gender but 65% of the employees in her sports fashion brandcompany are women. The world has changed and people around me have never made me think aboutgender. I am fortunate to be in such a position, says Reddy, who received funding for her startup when shewas 23 from one of the top venture capital firms, Accel Partners. Her firm sells several celebrity apparelbrands, apart from accessories and memorabilia. Reddy returned to India to start her own business afterinterning at a boutique investment bank in London for a year. The biological cycle makes it imperative forwomen to make adjustments in their careers. These are adjustments men don't have to make, and that is whywe don't see many women at senior levels. Hence, women don't have many inspirational entrepreneurs tolook up to, says Reddy, who believes women make better salespeople. She is hopeful the infrastructure forwomen to work after childbirth will improve with companies providing flexible working hours

Women need to break away from just followingIn entrepreneurship, gender hardly makes a difference, says Rashmi Daga, 36, founder of online food startupFreshMenu. I'm from a Marwari family and my family was not even surprised when I took the plunge, sheadds. Mother of a four-year-old daughter, Daga had taken a break from work for a year in 2011. It is achallenge and you need to do a balancing act. There is never going to be a time when your kids will need youless, says Daga, adding that her husband spends more time with their child. She feels that sometimes womenfind it difficult to estimate how much work one can do because they are trained to follow. You have tostep out and say I want to do this, says Daga, adding that occasionally it is tough to convince people thatwomen are as capable as men. Despite the inherent bias, you don't see people say that publicly, Daga says.She believes women understand consumer behaviour better and make for better entrepreneurs.

We need more female coders

The idea of Pipa+Bella was born with the understanding that fashion jewellery is a fast growing yet highlyfragmented industry in India. Young women are increasingly fashion conscious and exposed to internationalmarkets and trends, yet there aren't enough brands for them in India. I saw this as an opportunity. Mybackground was largely in marketing, so when I started Pipa+Bella, I felt the need to hire a person with astrong technical engineering background that would complement my softer skill set.I was keen on hiring afemale CTO because our product and customers are female-centric but there is a shortage of female coderscompared to male, says Pandya, who has an MBA from Wharton. This is a reality not only in India, but inother startup hubs around the world, including Silicon Valley, which is dominated by men. The same is truefor the venture capital space, where there is an unintentional selection bias towards male founders. In July,Pipa+Bella raised $650,000 from a group of investors. Her suggestion is to have coding academiesspecifically for women along the lines of ones in the US and UK.

1 of 4 22-Nov-15 7:48 AM

At first, people thought we were just two girls having funIn 2012, when Shivani Poddar and Tanvi Malik started FabAlley to make shopping easier for single,independent women in metros, they faced one challenge: Two 25-year-olds were not taken seriously.Recruitment was a challenge. Most often, we were interviewing men who asked us about our backgroundand age.People wouldn't meet us; they thought we were two girls doing this as a fun thing, says Malik.Customers and potential staff realized how serious they were only after they met them. Now, more than halftheir 75-member team is male. Poddar and Malik feel there is no glass ceiling, and women's participation instartup events across the country is increasing. Not many women are entrepreneurs but you can see morewomen-only discussions happening, says Malik. Poddar feels being a woman in the fashion space hasadvantages. People trust women in this space, she says, adding that success isn't defined by sector. In theend, it comes down to how the idea is executed.

Investors rarely look at gender before funding you

Priyanka Gill and Namrata Bostrom were living in London when they started noticing that there was nodigital content for young women in India. So they started a portal to provide content about fashion, beauty,lifestyle and pop culture. The duo believes the challenges female entrepreneurs face aren't different frommen. Investors rarely look at gender before investing. We haven't struggled to raise funds, says Gill, whose30 employees are all women. However, she adds that not many women start their own ventures thoughthey're happy to work in emerging businesses. There is a perspective that only women understand, shesays. Gill is also mother of two, a five-year-old girl and a nine-year-old son. I make it a point to switch offduring the weekends to spend time with my children, she says. That obviously happens only because shemanages her time well. And with a lot of help from a supporting family! she adds.

Ability to multi-task helps when starting from scratch

Aditi Avasthi doesn't believe there is a special challenge one faces as a woman entrepreneur.Entrepreneurship is exciting and fraught with challenges, says Avasthi, who set up ed-tech startup Embibe,which specializes in competitive entrance exam preparation, in 2012. Having worked in the corporate sectoras well as run a startup, she feels both offer equal opportunities to women. Running my own business andbeing able to breathe life into my vision of disrupting the education system using data science and technologymakes me more determined to achieve my goals. Patience, persistence and being able to multi-task comenaturally to me as well as most women so that is a big advantage when starting from scratch. Avasthi has afavourite startup story: The team was in the middle of a big debate when their admin person called. Theywalked out and saw a couple, parents of a student who had got into BITS Goa. The student had insisted theycome and say thank you to us with sweets. We ask ourselves every single day: What more can we measure toimprove the score that defines young people's lives?

(Reporting by Samidha Sharma, Anand J and Shalina Pillai)

2 of 4 22-Nov-15 7:48 AM

3 of 4 22-Nov-15 7:48 AM

4 of 4 22-Nov-15 7:48 AM