Prof. (Dr.) Anita Tripathy Lal
“Fearless – thy name is Woman”!
Centuries ago Shakespeare in ‘Hamlet’ (1603) had quoted, “Frailty- thy name is Woman!” Little did he know that over the years and time being a testimonial in witnessing the achiever spirit of the women entrepreneurs, today -with pride one can say, “Fearless -thy name is Woman!”
Today the women entrepreneurs of India are increasingly a force to be reckoned with, as they have been ‘breaking barriers and scaling new heights’.”According to the Women’s Global Entrepreneurship study conducted in US, UK and India, commissioned by Dell (2012), it has been found that the ideal country for a woman starting a business could well be India.”Moreover, ‘there has been a 50 percent increase in women joining the start- up ecosystem over last year’ (NASSCOM, 2017).
What is driving so many women to start-up is it the ecosystem or is it the kinds of traits they possess which have helped them to deal with the challenges over the years-beginning from societal taboos and gender stereotyping in the initial days to the competitive business environment of the globalized world. Their Entrepreneurial journey highlighted the various traits they possess which have actually helped them to overcome the hurdles to emerge successful. It has been observed that the first trait – the ‘Risk taking Ability’ of these women entrepreneurs happen to be ‘moderately high’ whereas research suggests that successful entrepreneurs are moderate risk takers.
Coming to the second trait,all these women entrepreneurs are contributing to the society by adding value through their entrepreneurial pursuits, however thelevel of ‘Innovativeness’ of these entrepreneurs’ ranges from low to medium. According to social scientists in general, majority of the entrepreneurs when they start- up, their level of innovativeness also ranges from low to medium. With adequate support from Investors and conducive ecosystem, they could be high on Innovativeness.
For the third trait, all the women entrepreneurs qualify as top performers and hence they happen to be very high on’Achievement Orientation’. McClelland in his study has stated that the entrepreneurs are majorly successful because of their high achievement orientation.
Finally, the fourth trait to succeed is the overall ‘Managerial Skills’ required by an entrepreneur to run the enterprise. It was interesting to find that all of them scored moderately high on managerial skills. Moreover, there have been lots of studies quoting women as great managers.
It was amazing to find that it is by sheer dint and merit these women entrepreneurs have ‘Unleashed their Potential’- maybe by beginning small with less scope for high innovation, yet they have been moderately high risk takers in life and along with overall high managerial skills they have become successful, primarily because they believed in themselves which drove them to ‘Ideate; Accelerate and Execute’, all because they possessed one of the most important entrepreneurial traits’ i.e. ‘High Achievement Orientation’. Hence, they have been significantly applauded as ‘Beginners’,’Young Achievers’; ‘Achievers’; ‘Super Achievers’; ‘Role Models’; ‘Entrepreneurs Par Excellence’ to being the recipient of ‘Life time Achievement’ in the field of entrepreneurship.
In fact as a jury member, it was indeed a privilege to go through the profiles of various women entrepreneurs whose successful initiatives have been acknowledged with appreciation and awards in the 8th Women Entrepreneurship Conference, 2018 by Delhi Management Association recently. The ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ was bestowed upon Ms. Lakshmi Venktaraman Venkatesan (Founding Trustee & EVP, Bhartiya Yuva Shakti Trust) for significantly contributing for more than 25 years by helping the less privileged youth in Delhi, Rural Haryana, Chennai, Rural Chennai, Pune, Hyderabad, Rural Maharashtra and Assam in setting up viable enterprises. Whereas, the ‘Entrepreneur Par Excellence Award’ went to Ms. Neena Malhotra (Managing Director Alert Card Company) for being a serial entrepreneur since the early 1970’s and has the honour of being the founder of four companies. The ‘Role Model Entrepreneur Award’ was bagged by our favourite Dr. Sikha Sharma (Managing Director, NUTRI-HEALTH) for reigning the wellness sector and inspiring many of us for the last two decades…………..Saluting the Women Entrepreneurs!
(The author is Prof. In-Charge, Centre for Entrepreneurship Development FORE School of Management, New Delhi)
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