These 8 women-led startups are driving change by offering innovative products and services

The startup world has never been a levelled playing field for women entrepreneurs as they face obstacles in networking, fundraising, and more. But women entrepreneurs continue to disrupt the status quo, leaving their indelible mark across sectors.

According to WISER’s recent report, the number of women-led startups in India has surged from 10% to 18% in just five years. In 2017, there were 6,000 startups in the Indian ecosystem, with 10% being led by women. Fast forward to 2022, the number has risen to 80,000, with women founders now commanding an 18% share.

On National Startup Day, HerStory brings forward the unheard success stories of eight such women entrepreneurs who have navigated the challenges and have come out victorious.

Read on!

Breast milk jewellery

In 2019, Preety Maggo started Magic of Memories, making keepsake jewellery from breast milk, child’s hair, parts of the umbilical cord, blood, and more. While she did not receive any funding after pitching on Shark Tank India, she is confident of scaling her unusual venture.

Preety started off with hair and breast milk, and then kept creating new variants using parts of the umbilical cord, or pieces of clothes of dear ones. She creates jewellery based on client requests, for both the product and its treatment. Each piece is customised, and she presently offers rings, pendants, and bracelets. For example, she dehydrates breast milk before it is used, and uses a dry form of human blood (when requested) in the jewellery.

Sustainable skincare brand from Sikkim

Rinzing Choden Bhutia is the founder of organic and handcrafted skincare line Agapi Sikkim. The brand also trains tribal women to make handcrafted soaps and start their own businesses.

After corporate stints in America Online and Asti Electronics, and taking the entrepreneurial route by joining her aunt in her landscaping business, Bhutia decided to return to her native state, Sikkim, in 2012 and started building a sustainable farmstay, Agapi, in North Sikkim.

Bhutia had earlier attended Petrichor, a vegan retreat offered by a couple in Gorubathan in West Bengal, where she had taken up a short course on making handcrafted soaps. Bhutia began making handcrafted soaps from her kitchen.

Bhutia decided to tap into what was available around her, mostly local plants. Tite Pati or mugwort, an invasive variety of weed, is claimed to have a wide variety of health benefits ranging from relieving stress, as an antiseptic, helping in digestion, is known for its anti-inflammatory properties, and as an anti-oxidant.

There were also other ubiquitous ingredients like turmeric and aloe vera that grew in plenty. Once the pandemic abated, Bhutia got an opportunity to work with the Skill Development and Capacity Building Department in Sikkim to train 21 women in the village on how to make handcrafted soaps and skincare products. Now, Agapi Sikkim is not just an entrepreneurial project, but has taken on a social angle and continues even today.

Helping farmers become micro-entrepreneurs

Nidhi Pant, the Co-founder of S4S Technologies, works at the intersection of agriculture, gender, energy access, and financial inclusion. At the heart of S4S Technologies are smallholder women farmers trained to be micro-entrepreneurs with the right combination of tech, finance, and market access, increasing their household income by 100-200% annually.

S4S started by providing technology solutions to farmers for reducing food wastage, but realised that farmers are not marketers and providing market linkage with technology is necessary to integrate buyback of the processed produce.

At the heart of the S4S business model is village-level sourcing and processing operated by women farmers turned micro-entrepreneurs. S4S works with women micro-entrepreneurs to convert produce into non-perishables by providing them with the right combination of technology, finance, and market.

The processing is done through a solar-powered dehydration system, with a solar conduction dryer that can process 45+ different food categories (fruits and vegetables, pulses and grains, nuts, spices, tea, coffee, milk, alternate proteins), and requires no electricity. This is deployed at farms to reduce food wastage at source.

Farmers can store produce for a long time as the shelf life is increased to a year without the need for cold storage. The processed produce is made fit for the customer at the central facility and supplied as food ingredients to the food and beverage industry. Serving over 1,100 B2B customers, S4S works with 1,200 micro-entrepreneurs and 60,000 smallholder farmers in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and Odisha, and processes 60,000 tonnes of produce.

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Peer-to-peer conversations around mental health

IIT alumni Punita Mittal and Mahak Maheshwari are building SoulUp, a peer platform driving conversations and support groups around mental health and well-being.

SoulUp offers one-on-one conversations with trained peers on various aspects—from mental health, relationships, life choices, career/work, parenting, and more in a non-judgmental space. It also features group conversations led by a mental health expert in the form of 75-minute online video conversations with people facing similar situations and challenges.

At present, the founders are keeping it online as they found that several people are more comfortable with the medium and can connect better.

Most popular peer conversations on SoulUp centre around relationships, dating, parenting, caregiving, and diseases like kidney conditions and organ donation. SoulUp has 300 peers on the platform trained by the Hank Nunn Institute in Bengaluru.

Empowering through AI

Sheena Gill’s personal journey, marked by multiple miscarriages and challenges in her second pregnancy, led her to join CognitiveCare as Chief Growth Officer in 2020. Frustrated by the lack of technology to predict maternal and infant health risks, she became a founding member of the healthcare AI startup.

Founded in 2018 by Venkata Narasimham Peri (PV) and Dr Suresh Attili, Hyderabad- and California-based CognitiveCare has created an AI platform to detect, quantify, and stratify propensity of 48 maternal and infant health risks, including sepsis, postpartum haemorrhage, gestational diabetes, anaemia, and more.

Gill’s background has been in STEM and Law, coupled with her career in legal and healthcare leadership roles. Her efforts played a pivotal role in the company’s international recognition and securing a $1 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2022. The grant supports antenatal risk stratification through CognitiveCare's Maternal Infant Health Insights & Cognitive Intelligence (MIHIC) solution, achieving over 90% accuracy in outcomes like postpartum hemorrhage. CognitiveCare’s work also caught the attention of the LV Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad as there are many risks that come under the ophthalmological purview, related to maternal child health.

Recognised as a participant in the 2022 AWS Healthcare Accelerator, CognitiveCare emphasises collaboration with non-profit organisations for grassroots impact while dispelling the notion that AI replaces healthcare professionals.

One stop solution for women’s health needs

From puberty to menopause, women undergo many struggles, including mental, physical, and hormonal challenges. As Mumbai resident and corporate employee Richa Pendake started searching for the right products to help solve these problems, all she could find were medicines or a few individual products with no holistic solutions.

She decided to turn her passion for nutrition into business, and along with her husband, Saanket Pendke, she founded Nutrizoe in 2019. The Mumbai-headquartered women’s nourishment company offers solutions to pregnancy issues, fertility problems, period cramps, and postpartum recovery.

The startup’s most popular product is its lactation bars named Lactobites, made from Indian superfoods and a combination of galactagogue that helps naturally increase milk supply in mothers. The company claims it to be India’s first lactation bar. Nutrizoe also offers nanotechnology-based oral strips for pregnancy nausea, period cramps, fertility, and healthy pregnancy containing Vitamin B6, B12, and D3, gingerols, chaste berries, Vitamins C, E, and B Complex, Zinc, and lemon, among others.

The oral strips for period pain can be consumed by girls above 12 years. Recently, the brand also launched nutritious Zoe energy bars, high in protein and consisting of essential multivitamins like Vitamin A, B2 (Riboflavin), B3 (Niacin), B6 (Pyridoxine), B7 (Biotin), B9 (Folate), B12, Vitamin C, Vitamin D, and Zinc.

Beginning with 1,600 orders, Nutrizoe now clocks 7,500 orders monthly, serving more than 50,000 women for Lactobites.

“We aim to build a brand, which sells no quack items, instead offers highly trusted and easy-to-consume products for every phase of a woman’s life,” she says.

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Replacing screen time with audio content

During the pandemic, neighbours and mothers–Neha Sharma and Sowmya Jagannath–were concerned about their children’s increased screen time and started looking for solutions, but to no avail.

This search led them to their ‘aha’ moment and they decided to quit their jobs to start Vobble in September 2022.

Vobble is an audio OTT platform for kids aged 4-10 filled with audio stories, game shows, music, and activities. With over 1,000 minutes of content, the Bengaluru-based company has fetched 200 subscribers and Rs 6 lakh in revenue since August 2023.

Each month, Vobble adds 250 minutes of original, in-house-made content and an additional 250 to 300 minutes of content from other publications, including Harper Collins India, Amar Chitra Katha, Scholastic Tulika, and more. The company offers a starter pack worth Rs 3,500, which includes a parent-controlled app with six months of free audio content, kid-friendly headphones with volume limiters capped at 90 dB for safe listening, and two activity books.

“The idea of this product is to shift children’s focus from screen to sound and stimulate their imagination and creativity,” Sharma says.

From co-sisters to co-founders

Like thousands of other businesses, the COVID-19 pandemic tanked sales of Kimirica, an Indore-based startup manufacturing premium hotel toiletries since 2012.

Co-founders Rica Jain and Kimi Jain, who are also co-sisters, saw an opportunity amid the chaos and decided to focus their energy on Kimirica Lifestyle, a retail subsidiary of the Kimirica Group.

Launched in 2019, Kimirica Lifestyle is a luxury and 100% vegan self-care brand. It offers a range of products from premium bath and body products to plant-powered skincare and candles.

The brand offers products such as shampoo, shower gel, lotions, conditioner, and soaps, and vegan skincare products like serums, face water, face creams, sunscreen, and more. So far, it has more than 250 SKUs. The startup has 600 workers, out of which 80% are women.

With a nationwide customer base of over 5 lakh, the co-founders plan to take the brand global in the coming years.

“Passion is the key to unlocking your potential. Decide to pursue your dreams and take small steps towards them, for the world is truly your stage,” Kimi says.