7 Amazing Women Entrepreneurs of India: Their Success Stories and More
The past decade has seen significant growth in start-ups and entrepreneurs. The breed of budding entrepreneurs consists of both men and women entrepreneurs. From facing casual sexism to family pressure, they have all managed to find a place for themselves.
EnrichMyCareer dedicates this blog to those amazing women entrepreneurs, who have changed the terms and conditions of the game and are now making significant contributions to the economy.
Here is a well-curated list.
1. Kiran Mazumdar Shaw
Early Life
Kiran Mazumdar hails from a Gujarati family based in Bengaluru, Karnataka. She completed her education from Bishop Cotton Girl’s High School in Bangalore. Later, She majored in Zoology while attending Mount Carmel College.
She travelled to Australia to graduate in Malting and Brewing from Melbourne University where she was the only female in the class. Interestingly, she topped the class and earned the degree of master brewer.
Success Story
Kiran Mazumdar had her fair share of struggles before finding success. Rasendra Mazumdar, her father, was the chief brewer of United Breweries and Kiran wished to follow in his footsteps.
She worked in a few breweries abroad before she returned to India. In India, she faced great disappointment since she was denied jobs as it was referred to as a “men’s job” with no place for a woman. Not letting discouragement take over, she started looking overseas for opportunities and received a job offer from Scotland.
She came across another entrepreneur from Ireland, Leslie Auchincloss, the founder of Biocon Biochemicals Limited who was looking for an Indian entrepreneur to establish an Indian subsidiary. Biocon produced enzymes for use in brewing, textile and food packaging. She learnt about enzyme production.
Mazumdar was fascinated towards the opportunity and often calls herself as an accidental entrepreneur. Both of them together launched the business of making enzymes. Mazumdar returned to India and started Biocon India in 1978 in a rented garage with a seed capital of INR 10,000.
She faced a lot of rejections due to her gender and young age but slowly she made a place for herself and the rest is history. Not only is she a successful and celebrated businesswoman but also a great philanthropist.
Achievements
Over the years she has received various national and international awards and honours.
In 2010, she was listed as one of TIME magazine’s top 100 global influencers.
In 2011, she was listed amongst the top 50 businesswomen.
She is also a recipient of Padma Shri (1989) and Padma Bhushan (2005).
2. Falguni Nayar
Early Life
Falguni Nayar was born in a Gujrati family based in Mumbai, Maharashtra. Her father, a businessman, ran a small bearings company. Falguni graduated in business administration from Sydenham College of Commerce and Economics and completed her postgraduate degree from the reputed Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad.
Success Story
Despite being from a business background, she chose to work with other companies. Nayar spent 19 years working for the Kotak Mahindra Group before leaving in 2012 to launch her own company and added her name to the list of successful female entrepreneurs.
She started Nykaa in April 2012, at the age of 50, with $2 million of her own funds. Nayar is one of the self-made female Indian billionaires with her net worth rising to the tune of $6.5 billion, and entered the list of top 20 Indians by net worth. Going through various ups and downs and failing all the age-related stigma, she succeeded. Today she is the richest female entrepreneur in India.
Achievements
At the 2017 Economic Times Startup Awards, she received the “Woman Ahead” honour.
Falguni received the 2019 Economic Times Awards for Corporate Excellence’s Businesswoman of the Year honour.
She was also recognised by Forbes Asia as one of Asia’s Power Businesswomen in 2019 and by Vogue India as Businessperson of the Year in 2019.
3. Ghazal Alagh
Early Life
Ghazal hails from Haryana. She graduated from Punjab University with a BCA (Bachelor of Computer Applications) in 2010. She attended the New York Academy of Arts in 2013 to pursue her passion for art. Artist by nature, Ghazal always wanted to become a businesswoman. She was a corporate trainer for NIIT Limited in 2008. She provided SQL, J2ME, and Oracle training to managers and engineers from various IT firms. Ghazal worked at NIIT Limited for 2 years.
Success Story
It might come as a surprise to many but Alagh didn’t see success in her first attempt. Her first venture was Dietexpert that she launched in February 2012. Unfortunately, it was not successful. She then launched Being Art, an art studio where young children could explore their creativity through hands-on activities.
Ghazal and her husband were unable to discover natural products for their son after his birth which inspired her to launch skin care products in 2016 with no toxins, which today is known as Honasa Consumer Pvt Ltd (Mamaearth). Together with a few angel investors, they contributed 90 lakhs to the company’s investment. The main goal of Ghazal was to provide safe, natural and toxin-free products for newborns. This artist prefers to call herself a mompreneur.
Achievements
After the success of Mamaearth, she also launched TheDermaCo.
She has appeared in Shark Tank as one of the sharks.
In 2019, she received the Super Start-Up Asia award.
4. Sairee Chahal
Early Life
Sairee Chahal is originally from Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh. She moved to Delhi for her studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, where she earned her M. Phil. in International Studies. She earned a degree in PGDBM (Postgraduate Diploma in Business Management) from the Institute of Management Technology (IMT), Ghaziabad.
Success Story
Chahal is actively involved in women empowerment. She is the creator and CEO of SHEROES, a platform for women that supports their career, entrepreneurial, and financial goals. The SHEROES Community has access to resources, mentorship, and support for high growth careers. SHEROES works with companies to connect them with female talent in the form of employees, partners, clients, and company owners. SHEROES is not her first venture.
She launched a newspaper for mariners in 1999. In the year 2012, she started Fleximoms that aimed to avail work opportunities for women.
She also heads “Mahila Money” which gives loans to women for micro-entrepreneurship. Under this effort, financial assistance is given ranging from Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 2,00,000. A loan application can be submitted and approved in less than 48 hours. She is one of the board of directors of Paytm payment bank.
Achievements
She earned many honours and awards such as:
Cartier Award.
Femina Achievers Award.
Devi Award.
Most Powerful Women in Indian Business.
Editor’s choice for L’Oreal Femina Women’s Award.
Also read: Unconventional Career Options
5. Shradha Sharma
Early Life
Shradha Sharma, who was born in Patna, Bihar, moved to New Delhi in 1997 to finish her undergraduate and graduate degrees in history at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi. She earnt her master’s degree from The Mudra Institute of Communications in Ahmedabad.
Success Story
She Founded “YourStory” in September 2008. Before this successful venture, she was the Brand Advisor at the Times of India. Later, she joined CNBC TV18 as the Assistant Vice President. Working with media companies gave her an understanding of how media works. She implemented these lessons every day to improve herself, focus on becoming a better professional, and build a company that would make a difference in the most straightforward and practical way imaginable.
She used all her knowledge to kickstart her dream venture, YourStory, a start-up focused on telling stories of entrepreneurs. YourStory is referred to as India’s biggest platform for startup and entrepreneurs-related stories, resources, and news.
She also started other sister initiatives like HerStory, and SocialStory. Till date, her organization has helped approximately 1,20,000 entrepreneurs in sharing their stories which have reached more than 10 million people.
Today, YourStory has received investments from well-known business persons and investors including Ratan Tata, Vani Kola, Karthee Madasamy and T.V. Mohandas Pai.
Achievements
In 2016, she was a Fortune 40 under 40.
In 2015, she got the ET Promising Entrepreneurs of India Award.
6. Kanika Tekriwal
Early Life
Kanika Tekriwal is from Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. Born in a traditional Marwari family, she had to deal with sexism. She graduated from Mumbai with a degree in economics and a certification in visual communication. She completed MBA from Coventry University in London. After masters, she worked in aerospace industry. At the age of 22, she was diagnosed with 2nd stage Hodgkin’s lymphoma (a type of cancer).
Success Story
This small-town girl managed to beat cancer and start her aviation venture by the time she was merely 22 years old. She started JetSetGo, a private aviation company in 2013. Jetsetgo is India’s first marketplace of private chartered planes and helicopters.
She is a woman entrepreneur, who built the ₹ 150 crore-turnover first Indian aircraft leasing company starting on Uber model. Her startup is often dubbed “Uber of Indian sky”. She is the richest self-made lady on the Hurun Rich List. Her business has served 100,000 passengers and has operated 6,000 flights.
Achievements
She was selected by BBC as one of the 100 most inspirational women in history.
She was named one of the 30 emerging prominent entrepreneurs by Forbes Asia.
The Indian government gave her the National Entrepreneur Award.
She appears on CNN’s list of the 20 under 40.
She got the title of “The Sky Queen” by Entrepreneur.
7. Vani Kola
Early Life
Vani, an Andhra Pradesh native, finished her postsecondary education at the age of 16. She studied electrical engineering at Osmania University in Hyderabad, where she was “one of six girls among 400 engineering students.” Later, she completed her Master of Engineering from the Arizona State University in the United States.
She then started working for notable organisations in the technology sector, including Empros, Control Data Corporation, and Consilium Inc.
Success Story
Vani started her first company, RightWorks, in 1996 after spending over 12 years as an employee. RightWorks was an e-procurement company. Later Vani sold 53% of the shares of RightWorks to the Internet Capital Group. Eventually, she sold the company to 12 technologies for $86 million in 2001.
She went on to discover another side to herself and founded NthOrbit, a company dealing with supply-chain software.
After this, Vani was prepared to embark on a new adventure by returning to India after living in the United States for 22 years in order to engage with young entrepreneurs. In order to grasp the Indian market for investing, she spent a month conducting research, travelling, and meeting people. This was the beginning of her career as a venture capitalist.
Following extensive investigation, she teamed up with former Intel Capital India CEO Kuar Shiralagi and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Vinod Dham. They created a $189 million venture capital fund with New Enterprise Associates (NEA) backing. NEA Indo-US Venture Partners is the name of this company. After four years of good operation, NEA made the decision to leave this joint venture and directly enter the Indian market.
Kola and Shiralagi changed the company’s name to Kalaari Capital in 2011. After separating with Dham, she raised an additional $440 million, making Kalaari Capital the largest venture capital company led by a woman and the second-largest venture capital firm in India by assets. Kola succeeded in selling 21 start-ups out of the 84 companies she had invested in.
With her venture capital firm, she has currently established a strong presence in the market and effectively managed more than 50 investments. She herself holds stakes in 60+ start-ups.
Achievements
In 2014, Forbes named Vani Kola as one of the most powerful women in Indian industry.
In 2018, in Delhi, she received the TiE Delhi-NCR 5th Edition of Women Entrepreneurship Summit Award.
She also received the Midas Touch award for the best investor in 2015.
She was also listed as one of the Most Powerful Women in Indian Business by Fortune India in 2018 and 2019.
Conclusion
So here it was. Our top female entrepreneurs who achieved success and greatness, and who continue inspire many more women (and men alike) to work hard and leave a mark in their fields. Their achievements prove that nothing is impossible if you follow your true calling and keep moving forward with strong determination, will power and consistency.
The sad reality is that most youngsters fail to find their calling and that is where we come in. Our mission is to help 1 million people achieve their dreams. To discover your career path or to build a great career, Book a call today.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. Who is the richest female entrepreneur in india?
As of 2023, Falguni Nayar has emerged as the richest female entrepreneur in India.
2. Who is youngest self-made female entrepreneur in India?
As per the Economic Times, the youngest self-made woman entrepreneur of 2023 is Neha Narkhede, co-founder of Confluent, a streaming data technology business. The IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List 2022 features her name.
3. What is the meaning of mompreneur?
Mompreneur is a word used to define a woman who is actively playing the role of a mother and a business woman running her enterprise.
Nishant is an Internationally Certified Career Coach, a Career Counsellor, an Education Consultant, a Soft Skills Trainer, and an ardent advocate of youth empowerment through personalized guidance, mentoring, and developmental interventions. He is also an International Economic Development and Business Consultant. Over the years, he has helped many students of different age groups and working professionals in discovering their true selves, setting appropriate career goals, and walking the right career paths.
Nishant is a mechanical engineering alumnus from R.V. College of Engineering, Bangalore. He has been widely featured in top media and also delivered talks at Cambridge University-UK and IIT-Guwahati among others. He has also delivered workshops at many reputed schools and colleges on various careers and skills-related topics.
