‘Bengaluru start-up ecosystem has had trickle-down impact on rural Karnataka’s entrepreneurial aspirations’ Premium

The low women’s labour force participation has been slowing India’s economic growth, but the future looks positive, says Anand Sri Ganesh, CEO of NSRCEL at IIM Bangalore.

India has been riding the start-up and entrepreneurship wave for a while now, however, the share of women entrepreneurs has been significantly low. While NITI Aayog figures from 2022 peg the number of women entrepreneurs running micro, medium, and small enterprises at around 20 percent, other reports note that the share of women entreprenurs in India have been hovering around 14 percent.

NSRCEL, the incubation arm of IIM Bangalore, in collaboration with the Karnataka State Rural Livelihood Promotion Society (KSRLPS), recently launched the Swavalambane program designed to scale and support women-owned non-farm businesses in rural Karnataka. The programme provides scaling opportunities to 150 women entrepreneurs.

Anand Sri Ganesh, CEO of NSRCEL at IIM Bangalore, spoke to The Hindu about the programme, the need for more women entrepreneurs, and the trickle-down impacts of Bengaluru’s start-up ecosystem.