According to a report on women entrepreneurship in urban India by Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME) and Facebook, India is likely to have around 9 lakh new women entrepreneurs by 2025 in food and education sectors combined where women are present in larger numbers as employees as well as entrepreneurs.

The report also says that textile, food, personal services and education together account for 65 per cent of women-owned businesses and 58 per cent of female employment in urban India. Food and education sectors emerge as the top two sectors that are amenable to mass entrepreneurship.

In fact, out of 28.1 lakh women-owned businesses in urban India, 6.8 lakh and 5.5 lakh are in textile and food while 2.5 lakh are in personal services and 1.2 lakh in education. While food has the potential to create around 6.5 lakh women entrepreneurs, education may churn up around 2.5 lakh women-owned businesses.

According to the report, a large share of women businesses in textiles is likely to be a contract or low value outsourcing related businesses such as tailoring shops. Similarly, the personal services category including ventures like dry cleaning and funeral services, has low-value businesses.

The importance of women entrepreneurship has also caught the government’s attention as it announced keeping 10 per cent of the SIDBI’s ₹10,000 crore Fund of Funds (FFS) for startups reserve for women-led startups.

The number of women-run ventures, however, remains small. As per the Sixth Economic Census (2014), only 14 per cent of Indian women run or owned businesses. In fact, women business owners accounted for only 11 per cent of the total business owners in India, as per the Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurs 2018.