Poor Ecosystem Holding Back Indian Entrepreneurs: Facebook

New Delhi: Four out of every five women from metros as well as smaller towns in India are eager to start their own businesses and become entrepreneurs, but lack of networks and accessible technological infrastructure are holding them back in their tracks, a top Facebook official has said.

Facebook, in 2017, introduced a programme for women-founded companies — SheLeads Tech — to support them with access to community, tools, mentorship and resources to succeed in building a business in technology.

The programme has now expanded to 87 cities in the country with 596 women-led tech start-ups across agritech, edutech, gaming and other verticals in just two years since its launch.

“If we go back three years, the number of women-founded start-ups in the ecosystem were about nine per cent and today it has grown to 14 per cent.

“Even the money that was raised by women entrepreneurs and their start-ups has increased from 3.5 per cent to 5.4 per cent now,” Satyajeet Singh, Head of Platform Partnerships, South Asia, Facebook told IANS.

India is the third largest start-up market globally and with its start-up initiatives like SheLeads Tech, Code for the Next Billion, India Innovation Hub and more, Facebook has come to discover that the start-up phenomenon is rapidly expanding to smaller cities.

“We have start-ups coming from Dehradun, Hubli, Nasik and other smaller cities. The widespread start-ups phenomenon is very much present in tier two and three towns,” Singh said.

Supported by 30 women mentors, Facebook’s SheLeads Tech initiative aims to provide a platform to women entrepreneurs across all tech-related sectors like agritech, healthtech, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), gaming, beauty, sanitation, water harvesting and more.

The education technology sector has especially seen a massive inclination from Indian women entrepreneurs, according to Facebook. (IANS)

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