Bangalore : “Think big. Dream big. Do not hold yourself back. Reach out for opportunities and resources. And ladies, remember ‘ambition’ is not a dirty word”. The auditorium at IIM Bangalore reverberated with loud cheers as over 200 alumnae and women 
entrepreneurs were exhorted to celebrate their journey to entrepreneurship and the power of collaboration, networking and mentoring by Meena Ganesh, Founder and CEO of PorteaMedical, at the launch of AWE@NSRCEL – a networking platform for alumnae and women entrepreneurs at IIM Bangalore on Friday (February 21).
“India has enough problems that need solving; and in every problem is an opportunity for an entrepreneur. Moreover, Bangalore is a city for entrepreneurs – the best city in South East Asia for entrepreneurs in fact because it provides access to world class talent, resources and funding,” said Meena, who till February 2013 was the promoter and Board member of TutorVista and CEO and MD of Pearson Education Services, and now heads a new technology enabled home healthcare company she founded in July 2013 to bring innovative healthcare services to the Indian market.
Meena observed that one of the more significant challenges faced by entrepreneurs in general and women entrepreneurs in particular was that of managing growth. “This could be because of thought barriers,” she remarked as she briefly recaptured her own journey from ‘bringing in the coffee and bringing in the pay cheque to bringing in the ideas”.
Doffing her many feathered cap (Meena is co-promoter of several new age Internet and Technology enabled start-ups like Bigbasket.com , Bluestone.com, Mustseeindia.com, etc) to a forum like AWE@NSRCEL for providing a platform for women entrepreneurs to network, she emphasized – repeatedly – the need for women entrepreneurs to believe in their idea and in themselves.
“Women entrepreneurs must reach out for resources – be it terms of a training program or in terms of mentoring support. Passion for an idea is fine but as an entrepreneur if you want to get rich, then do be prepared to work very hard. Be prepared to encounter gender stereotyping when you are a woman who is in the initial stages of her entrepreneurial journey but remember to build your career record so strongly that soon gender becomes immaterial,” she said, urging young women to set aside fears of work-life balance even before starting out on their careers.
AWE@NSRCEL, launched to celebrate the 10th anniversary of NSRCEL’s Management Programme for Women Entrepreneurs (MPWE), also hosted a panel discussion on the theme, ‘Step up & Scale up – Shattering Myths About Scaling up’ between 3:00 pm and 6:30 pm on Friday (February 21) at the IIMB Auditorium.
The panel comprised Meena Ganesh, Sucharita Eashwar, Executive Director for WEConnect International in India; Revathy Ashok, former Managing Director of Tishman Speyer who now runs an Independent Consulting Practice, Iris Consulting; Anjana Vivek, Founder-Director, VentureBean Consulting Pvt Ltd; and Meera K, co-founder at ‘Citizen Matters ’ and director at Oorvani Media Pvt Ltd.
Quoting from a recent study which rated the performance of Bangalore in the Women Entrepreneur Index higher than that of India with 47 per cent of women being sole proprietors of their business and 68 per cent being motivated by opportunity rather than the need to earn money, Meera K also drew attention to the downside of the study which revealed that fewer than 28 per cent of these women entrepreneurs were found to cross the Rs 1-crore revenue mark.
“Where are the barriers then?” she asked the panel. Revathy Ashok opined that “Our barriers are more social and cultural than institutional”, while Sucharita Eashwar said that 90 per cent of women in the quoted study had cited access to markets and access to institutional capital as barriers.
Anjana Vivek, who cheerfully described herself as “someone who became an entrepreneur at 50”, argued that while it was still early days for women’s entrepreneurship that brings in institutional capital, one must never “fear the rope as a snake”. Recounting her own journey of starting up and scaling up, she added that a woman entrepreneur must make her choices confidently and consciously.
Meena Ganesh exhorted women entrepreneurs to state their capabilities clearly and confidently and seek funding without inhibition.
The last word was reserved for policy. The panel drew attention to the fact the Ministry of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSME) has plenty of funds for entrepreneurs but there is no mechanism to track how much of this funding is accessed by women entrepreneurs. Are the policy makers listening? Better still, is every woman entrepreneur – alumna of MPWE or not – listening?