Altius Shodh Journal of Management and Commerce

ISSN 2348 8891

WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS IN E-COMMERCE: AN INDIAN PERSPECTIVE

*Dr. Dharmendra Mehta **Er. Sunayana Soni & ***Dr Naveen K Mehta
* Reader, FMS Pt. JNIBM, Vikram University, Ujjain.
** Research Scholar, FMS Pt. JNIBM, Vikram University, Ujjain.
*** Dr Naveen K Mehta, Associate Professor, MIT, Ujjain.

Abstract
From the past, generally entrepreneurship has been known as a male-driven phenomenon but slowly and
steadily time has made significant changes in the prevailing situation and brought radical changes. In today's
global scenario, women are emerging as excellent and motivating entrepreneurs. Women of today prefer to
be entrepreneurs rather than home makers. The role of women in economic development is magnanimous
and day by day expanding by leaps and bounds. Women have already proven their mettle that they can not
only excel in each and every segment but they can also do it emphatically and effectively. The world of
entrepreneurship is not an exception to this fact. It is need of hour to foster a healthy, secured and positive
environment for women entrepreneurs so there should not be any gender discrimination or biased attitude
with them and thereby they can contribute their share to the overall and sustainable development of society at
large and nation as well. Some of the prominent Indian women entrepreneurs in e-commerce are Anisha
Singh, Founder and CEO, mydala.com, Shivani & Tanvi owners, Faballey.com, Jennifer & Mansi, owners,
Bakebox.com and many more. Undoubtedly, today's women e-commerce entrepreneurs are tomorrow's
industrialists. The present study is aimed at discussing the issues and problems faced by Indian women
entrepreneurs who are contributing significantly in the domain of e-commerce.
Keywords: E-Commerce, Women Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, Market, Sales, Business.

Introduction
Women entrepreneurs, encompass approximately 1/3 of
all entrepreneurs worldwide. Some recent international
studies found that women from low to middle income
co untr ies a re m o re l ik e ly to e nte r ea rly s ta ge
entrepreneurship when compared to those of higher
income countries. A significant factor that may play a
role in this disparity can be attributed to the fact that
women from low income countries often s eek an
additional means of income to support themselves and
their family. Largely, 40 -50 % of all small businesses
are owned by women in developing countries the days
gone when you would find women perched in the kitchen
of the house. These day women are competing shoulder
to shoulder to men and also excel in many fields.
According to online studies conducted earlier this year
f o r ra nk i ngs o n the bes t p la ce s f o r f em a le
entrepreneurship, India rank high in list as compare to
its position in 2013.India's female entrepreneurship
represents statistics of improvement with respect to
women finding opportunities to start ventures (60%),
validation with respect to skills (52%) and do not feel
the impending doom of failure for their startup (57%).
Alibaba.com, the global leader in B2B e-commerce has
expressed its intent to promote innovation and encourage
entrepreneurship amongst women in India. Alibaba.com
is basically designed to educate women about the benefits
of the internet and how e-commerce as a tool can help
them build and grow their own businesses.

Women entrepreneurship can be termed as a process

when woman or group of women initiate, organize and
work together in any business enterprise. The Indian
women are no longer regarded backward or conservative
or less competitive rather they can live up expectations,
ca se if they are pro vided oppo rtunities to pro ve
themselves. The Indian women entrepreneurs are
emerging as a potential human resource in 21 century.
It is observed that women leaders are more assertive,
persuasive and risks takers than their male counterparts.
Indomitable characteristics of women entrepreneurs like
hard work, diligence and perseverance, ability to learn
quickly, persuasiveness, open style of problem solving,
willingness to take risks and chances, to motivate people,
knowing how to win and lose gracefully are name to few
to show this that why they are class apart.

Literature Review
Maier, S., & Nair-Reichert, U. (2007) identified a set of
practices that underlie a successful Women Entrepreneurs
like government and institutional support, societal
involvement, training and empowerment, expansion of
market access, and managerial best practices. Researchers
anticipated that the insights generated by their research
may be useful both for purposes of effective program
development and policy design.
Siddiqui (2012) highlighted the problems and challenges
faced by women entrepreneurs in India and identified some
of the major problems identified as womens family

Altius Shodh Journal of Management and Commerce

ISSN 2348 8891

obligations, Gender difference, difficulty of Finance and Lowlevel risk taking attitude.

Vani Kola- is the Managing Director at the Kalaari

Capital and the CEO at the IndoUS Venture Partners.

Mellita, D., & Cholil, W. (2012) described the aspects

and role of e commerce for gender empowerment in
developing country. Empowering women through ecommerce require training, gender analysis, planning,
designing, implementation and monitoring assessment and
paying attention effect on womens live and their conditions.

Sabina Chopra- is the EVP Operations at Yatra.com

and also the co-founder of Yatra.com and shaped it
into one of Indias most popular travel portals.

Nehru and Bharadwaj (2013) analyzed the factors which

motivate women to start their own venture and the problems
faced by them when they ventured out to carve their own
niche in the competitive world of business environment.

Leading Indian Women Entrepreneurs and ECommerce

There is no deficiency of excellent and talented women
entrepreneurs in India. Various successful women
entrepreneurs like Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw of Biocon and
Ekta Kapoor of Balaji Telefilms have proved that they can
successfully manage the economics of the business as well
as home or family. Women entrepreneurs on the basis of
their skill and vision, prove that they have the ability to take
their budding ventures to scaling heights. Some of the
women entrepreneurs who are marching ahead in the
domain of E-commerce as:

Swati Bhargava - is the Chief Executive Officer and

theco-founder ofCashKaro.Swati, started her first
online entrepreneurial venture Cashback site Pouring
Pounds in the UK in mid-2011 with her husband Rohan.
Neeru Sharma- is the Co-Founder and the Director
of Corporate Development at Infibeam (an Indian
online shopping portal).

Key Issues
Perspectives

and

Challenges:

Indian

E-commerce can facilitate women entrepreneurs to save

time in every step of their business cycle, like identifying
business opportunities, raw-materials procurement and even
finding sales leads online. Analytics on Alibaba.com which
is a the online B2B e-commerce portal, showed that the
membership base of females on the site grew at 71% (Jun
30, 2011).This shows that e-commerce has the potential
to provide Indian businesswomen an effective and efficient
platform to overcome traditional male-dominated industries
and explore business prospects beyond conventional
channels.

Reasons for Indian Women becoming

Entrepreneurs

New Challenges & Opportunities for self fulfillment

Education & Qualification

Support of Family Members

Role Models to others

Bright future of their wards

Need for additional income

Family Occupation

Independency in decision making

Richa Kar - is a CEO and Co-Founder of Zivame.com ,

anonlinelingerieshoppingportalinIndia.Zivamewas
founded in August 2011.

Employment Generation

Innovative Thinking

Suchi Mukherjee- is the Founder and CEO of online

shopping portal Limeroad.com, founded in 2012.

Problems Faced by Indian Women Entrepreneurs

Upasana Taku - is the CEO and Co-Founder of

Zaakpay.com, a mobile app payment and internet
payment solutions to e-commerce companies in India.

Problem of finance

Scarcity of raw material

Stiff competition

Family ties

Lack of education

Pearl Uppal - is an Entrepreneur as well as an Investor.

She has many years of experience in companies like
GE, Rediff and Yahoo, she founded India based ecommerce marketplace Fashionandyou.com.

Male dominated society

Low risk- bearing ability

Financial problems

Anisha Singh - is a Founder and CEO of mydala.com.

It is website for discount coupon. She is conferred
with the Women Leadership Award at the World
Women Leadership Congress in 2014 and the Leading
Woman in Retail Award in 2012.

Marketing problems

Production problems

Health problems

Bhawna Agarwal- is the CEO of Luxury Retail

Services and is an Advisory Board member at Venture
Fund.

Altius Shodh Journal of Management and Commerce

Research Methodology & Objective

The objective of the research is to find the role of Indian
women entrepreneurship in E commerce era and to point
out the issues and challenges faced by women entrepreneurs
with the help of review of available literature. The secondary
data were collected from reports journals and magazines.
Data were also collected by surfing the internet and from
relevant websites.

Conclusions and Suggestions

Today e-commerce helps women entrepreneurs access
information, build and sustain business networks and
contribute to their familys household income. There are
many online platforms today that offer aspiring women
entrepreneurs virtual workplaces and digitally mobile
lifestyles thereby providing the needed flexibility to achieve
their business objectives. E-commerce has brought a great
revolution in the context of women empowerment. With
growing use of e-commerce, Indian women entrepreneurs
can easily access any sort of information, develop and
managebusinessnetworksandcontributeintheirrespective
household income. A recent Economic Times reports
highlights that with the emergence of online shopping such
as Amazon, Snapdeal and Flipkart, thousands of women
are attaining financial independence by selling products
across sectors such as health care, home furnishing,
jewellery, handicrafts, and fashion apparel. Vishal Chadha,
Vice President, Market Development, at Snapdeal stated
very rightly that their goal is to create 1 million successful
entrepreneurs in India within the next three years (The
Economics Times- 13 March, 2015).
Right efforts from all areas are required in the development
of women entrepreneurs in E-Commerce. There should be
a continuous effort to inspire, encourage, motivate and cooperate women entrepreneurs. An awareness programme
may be conducted on large scale with the intention of
creating awareness among women about the various areas
to conduct e-business. Organize training programmes to
develop professional competencies in e- business,
managerial aspects, leadership and other business functions
like marketing, production process, profit planning, accounts
and other skills may encourage women to carry out business
activities. Similarly, vocational training may enable women
entrepreneurs to understand the production process and
production management. Along with this, academic
institutes should tie up with various government and nongovernment agencies to help women entrepreneurship
development. For encouraging women entrepreneurs
interactions International, National, Local trade fairs,
Industrial exhibitions, seminars and conferences may be
organized at regular intervals. Women in business should
be offered soft loans & subsides for encouraging them into
industrial activities. The financial institutions should offer
working capital assistance both for small scale venture and
large scale ventures that are being run by women
entrepreneurs. Self help groups of women entrepreneurs
should be encouraged to mobilize resources and pooling
capital funds. E-commerce facilitates women entrepreneurs
to cut down time in every step of their business cycle,
ranging from identifying business opportunities, purchasing

ISSN 2348 8891

raw-materials and even finding sales. E-commerce is

buzzing and driving attention as within a very short stint of
time, e-commerce has encouraged entrepreneurship in the
country. Govt. of India and State Governments are also
coming up with Entrepreneurship Cells for women and also
top notch Business schools are launching exclusive programs
for honing the skills of women entrepreneurs.
Pro po s e d M o de l fo r Su s t a in a bl e G ro w t h &
Developme nt of Women Entre prene urs in ECommerce

Source: Developed by Authors on the Bases of

Literature Review

References:
1.

Maier, S., & Nair-Reichert, U. (2007). Empowering

women through ICT-based business initiatives: An
overview of best practices in e-commerce/e-retailing
projects. Information Technologies & International
Development, 4(2).

2.

Mellita, D., & Cholil, W. (2012). E Commerce and

Women Empowerment: Challenge for Women-Owned
Small Business in Developing Country. In Proceedings
of International Conference on Business Management
& IS (No. 1).

3.

Nehru, Jawaharlal, and Shubhra Bhardwaj. "Women

Entrepreneurship In India: Issues & Problems "You
Can Tell The Condition of A Nation By Looking At The
Status Of Its Women". Spectrum 2.7 (2013).

4.

Siddiqui, A. B. (2012). Problems Encountered by

Women Entrepreneurs in India. International Journal
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http://ww w.ipfonline.com/I PFCONTENT/new s/

industry-news/empowering-women-entrepreneurs-inindia-through-e-commerce.php. Accessed on 1 April,
2015.

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https://www.sumhr.com/list-successful-womenentrepreneurs-india-top/ Accessed on 11 March, 2015.

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February, 2015.

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