SAWIE Mentorship Series Presents: Entrepreneur's Journey

By – Ms. Sahera Sumar, Founder and CEO, Worldwide SHEroes; Global Consultant in Leadership Development, Arete: Full Potential; and Executive Director, United Nations Australia Association (NSW) [Click here to view profile]

Date: 28 October 2021 | Time: 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM (IST)/5:30 – 7:00 AM (ET)

One of the key ways to improve women’s participation in leadership roles is to support women in their entrepreneurial journey. In particular, in a fast-paced, emerging economy like India, increasing numbers of women entrepreneurs is likely to be in favor of the Indian economy and the job market. In the light of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to job losses and general economic downturn in India, entrepreneurship can be one of the powerful ways for women to participate in the work force and emerge as leaders.

At the moment, women constitute about 14% of the total number of entrepreneurs in India. As per the 2018 Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurs, India ranks 52 out of 57 countries. As per a 2019 report by Google and Bain & Company, accelerating the quantity and quality of women’s entrepreneurship can create over 30 million women-owned enterprises, of which 40% can be more than self-employment. This can generate potentially transformational employment in India of 150–170 million jobs, which is more than 25% of the new jobs required for the entire working age population, from now until 2030.

Therefore, through this session of the SAWIE Mentorship Series, we engaged with a successful entrepreneur, who talked about her journey and discussed the challenges that she faced in this journey of hers along with some vital insights that we could all learn from.