Recently, the Telangana state has implemented an MSME policy specifically looking to enhance participation by women among entrepreneurship. As of now, there are 58,644 registered women entrepreneurs in the state, which means roughly 3.1 women entrepreneurs for every 1,000 women in a female population that has crossed 1.88 crores.
In the report titled “Decoding Government Support to Women Entrepreneurs in India,” NITI Aayog positions Telangana is one of the top three states in the country with a share of women-led MSMEs. According to a report published on October 2022, women have taken the lead of 7.85% of the state MSMEs; however, West Bengal tops the list with 23.42% while Tamil Nadu follows at 10.37%.
The report further gives statistics representing that the number of women-owned MSMEs account for 20.37% of the national total, with 12.39 million out of 60.84 million registered MSMEs in India being found to be managed by women. Of interest is that over 99% of these falls within the definition of a “microenterprise,” and most are single-person owned and managed. More revealing, the study revealed that as few as 17% of women-owned enterprises actually employ workers, while only 95% of these businesses reported employing fewer than six on payroll. It determined that with the expansion in size, the enterprise had fewer women-headed businesses.
Dr Anupama Panduru, president of the CII Indian Women Network chapter, Telangana acknowledged that around 93.6% of women entrepreneurs in the state are part of the nano and micro segments of the MSME sector. She insisted that an industrial park approach, besides other specific amenities like worker accommodation along with subsidies to reduce the startup cost for women entrepreneurs would do the trick. K. Rama Devi, chairperson of ALEAP WE-HUB, an Atal Innovation Centre, said that though access to finance is gaining ground, sustainability in business remains a problem owing to a lack of marketing capabilities.
