Women entrepreneurs are real multi taskers: Mridu Bhandari speaks to them

In 2013, a study by some UK based psychologists revealed that women were faster and more organized at switching rapidly between tasks and under pressure. And most women that I spoke to also listed “multi-tasking” as their biggest strength. “Women can multi-task, have a calmer approach to problems, are more committed to a cause and by and large have lesser distractions and higher attention spans. We are also more resilient by nature and that makes us go on and on” says Oona Singh, Founder of the Jaipur based apparel and home décor brand Suvasa. The ability to juggle many roles at work and at home makes women sharper and better at managing time and priorities, leading to almost doubling their efficiencies.

Mom-preneur maybe a new age term but for years, women have successfully built small businesses from their homes, often at the cost of giving up flourishing corporate careers so they can rear a family. The flexibility of time and location become a huge priority once you become a mother and entrepreneurship offers these like no corporate job can – often attracting women for this very reason. Needless to say, an entrepreneur who values her own flexibility, in all likelihood offers the same to her employees as well – driving up their happiness quotient and in effect, their productivity.

If you look at the larger picture, the number of women entrepreneurs is still abysmally low despite a US based study suggesting that women-led firms have twice the growth of the industry average and outpace some of America’s largest tech companies in gender diversity – including Facebook, Google and Uber. In relative terms though, the situation seems to be improving. In the US itself, between 2007 and 2016, the number of women owned businesses increased by a whopping 45%. In India too, mom-preneurs have been on the rise owing to a multitude of factors like increasing internet and mobile phone penetration, ease of doing business, an emerging startup culture that encourages entrepreneurship and the more recent policy push to startups and in particular, women led startups.

“Building scale-able ventures is relatively new to the country and surged in the last 5-6 years. Various government initiatives and stories of successful women entrepreneurs is becoming inspiration for others. My belief is that the number of women entrepreneurs will further increase in coming years as entrepreneurship becomes a career of choice” says Padmaja Ruparel, President, Indian Angel Network.

Mridu Bhandari loves telling entrepreneurship stories on television, print and digital media and truly believes in the power of a small enterprise! A Ramnath Goenka awardee, Mridu is currently Editor – SMEs & Start Ups (Special Projects) at Network 18.