My dream is to have one Flipkart-like company by a woman

Telle Whitney is CEO and president of Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, which promotes women’s education, entrepreneurship and participation in technology. Whitney co-founded the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing with Anita Borg in 1994 and joined ABI in 2002. She tells TOI what needs to be done to get more women involved in the Indian startup ecosystem How do conferences like these influence women?   In the first year, there were just 600 women technologists participating. That has grown to 3,000. We have both technical and career sessions, and in India, we had good attendance from senior women. Being here with other women helps them stay in their career and reach for more. We are rewarding 10 women participating in our Women Entrepreneurship Quest (WEQ). We see more women starting companies. For there to be more women entrepreneurs, we need more women in technology. What are the challenges that Indian women entrepreneurs face? We did a survey among our own Indian entrepreneurial community. We found that getting funds is an issue because investors feel women are not serious enough. One of our ecosystem collaborators from NSCREL (an entrepreneur cell at IIM-B) said sometimes banks ask women to bring their husbands along or give collateral for loans. According to banking rules, they are supposed to give Rs 1 crore without any collateral. Second, women are not used to putting themselves out there. Many of them bootstrap. We struggle sometimes because we end up doubting ourselves and don’t have the confidence that we can grow big. My dream is to have one Flipkart-like company by a woman. Is there a difference in attitude between women entrepreneurs in India and the US? Right now, in the Indian culture, there is real yearning to be entrepreneurs. There are still only a few women role models. Some challenges are unique to India but there are similarities as well. Women in the US are a bit more confident but they too struggle for funding. In India, culturally people don’t think women can be entrepreneurs. I enjoy hearing the success stories of women I get to talk to. Culturally, there are challenges for women to become entrepreneurs in both countries. Are more success stories discussed now compared to 2010? Yes. Many big corporates did not have a diversity agenda back then. Now, we have more partners than we can take on board. Women come here to network. We would like to help them beyond WEQ and open the network wider. We are taking the WEQ winners to Silicon Valley. We help them meet other women entrepreneurs and VCs. This year, we did workshops in Delhi and Mumbai that around 85 women entrepreneurs attended. Now that we have a sizeable entrepreneurial community, we would like to expand all our programmes. The Indian startup ecosystem has grown manifold since 2010. Nasscom says 8% of entrepreneurs are women. Do you see participation increasing? If you look at WEQ, the number of women applicants was a trickle. 40 women applied in 2010, when the contest started. This year, we received more than 300 applicants. Last year, it was a little less than 200. These are startups in the 0-3 years category. It is more than a trickle now. We have been in touch with most of these entrepreneurs and 90% are still in business, which is phenomenal. It is the persistence of these women that is inspiring. The winner of the first WEQ, Apartmentadda’s Sangeeta Banerjee passed the prize money to another woman entrepreneur. She told that entrepreneur that she did not want the money back; instead, she asked her to pass it on to another woman entrepreneur. We give Rs 5 lakh. Do women entrepreneurs tend to stick to a few sectors like fashion, beauty and fitness? While women might be in these segments in larger proportion, we have seen women in high technology product startups as well. One of our winners was using technology to minimise wastage in fashion. We have received applications in healthcare and medical devices. Women are good at soft skills and in the digital era, the opportunities are endless. In the startup ecosystem you need a lot of networking to secure funding and access other things. That it is a boys’ club makes it difficult for women.