Accepting Myself as a Woman Entrepreneur

I have been asked by many to write down my learnings as a woman entrepreneur. Honestly, I will be lying if I say, it has been easy.

If I go into details of my journey of last 4.5 years, you might call me a bit cynical, prone to exaggeration and crazy. So let me not go into that now (though one day the pandora box will open and I will share my story). What I am sharing with you now are some fun experiences of being a woman and an entrepreneur :) and some questions that stay with me.

1. I have always wondered sitting next to a successful male entrepreneur in a panel or event, when the entrepreneur says, I had to sell my wife's jewellery to pay salary (to thunderous applause from an audience that comprise 99 percent male audience), what can be my heart rendering sale story? I don't have any gold and my husband definitely did not sell anything ;)

2. But before the wife comes the mother and her dreams, concerns, worries and unconditional love for her son cum entrepreneur. But for me and many like me – the Indian mother’s worries compound to the power of x when they hear their daughter is starting up. For my mother, the regular rhetoric was - be a good wife and don't get mad, otherwise you will end up alone and miserable :)

3. Starting up and Marriage - While articles around this topic have a tendency to go viral - who will marry a startup guy etc etc, I wonder what happens to a girl starting up or a woman entrepreneur and her marriage? (Trust me creating and building anything remotely decent requires same amount of 24*7 effort from both the genders:))

4. A good woman - now this is a question I leave you to answer. If I ask you, who according to you is an ideal girl, woman? What would you say? The answer my friend is something for you to give yourself. Does a 24*7 driven, "obsessed with her startup" girl come to your mind? But, for a great guy, if I say, he is a passionate, very driven entrepreneur, it does sound impressive right?

5. Its always the self-made man (raymonds knew it too:)), and if a woman makes it, then its always the community effort, why don't we hear self made woman? Or do we?

I have always maintained that to see more women startup, we don't need mind blowing efforts by government, accelerators,society, neither do we need money what we need is a mindset. A mindset to accept a woman as an equal. A mindset to push your mother, wife, sister, girlfriend to do what they want to do. To take pride in their success as they rejoice in every small accomplishment of yours.

Hopefully in years to come, we won't need one day to celebrate a woman's day as everyday we will learn to value and celebrate a woman!

Women Entrepreneurs: Quick Survey

This Women's Day we are conducting a quick survey on what Women Entrepreneurs want and are thinking about. We'll be coming up with a benchmark report on what Indian Women Entrepreneurs from across the country think on matters that affect them.

So if you are an Woman Entrepreneur - please take this short survey, and make your voice heard!