Get Inspired By These Five Female Entrepreneurs On National Start-Up Day

Today, January 16, is National Start-up Day, a day dedicated to promoting entrepreneurship and businesses. Let’s look at some of the well-known start-up companies in India that were founded by women. No stereotype, stigma, gender bias, or failure held them back from turning their dreams into reality.

Despite the various challenges that life kept throwing their way, they remained undeterred and continued to pursue their passion with sheer confidence, perseverance, determination, hard work, and willpower. These women are few among the millions of women who prove to the world that they are equally capable of reaching heights.

According to the Ministry of Statistics, women comprise only 13.76 percent of the total number of entrepreneurs in India. This is mainly due to the gender stereotyping and bias that believes that business is a man's world. It's a myth that women can't succeed in a field that is dominated by men, and hence investors are hesitant about bankrolling women's ventures. However, these women are game changers who have demonstrated that no field including business, is now solely dominated by men.

Let's take a look at these 5 female entrepreneurs and their achievements on National Start-up Day.

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Richa Kar - Zivame

Richa Kar is the co-founder of Zivame. Zivame is a Bangalore-based start-up that sells women’s apparel. Kar conceptualised the idea of her brand when she was working in the IT sector for companies like Spencers and ZAP. She named her company "Zivame," meaning "radiant me" in Hebrew. Kar founded the company in 2011 with her entire savings and a loan of 35 lakh rupees from friends.

Despite the challenges, Kar never gave up on her passion. Through her undeterred persistence and determined hard work, she finally made it big. Investors were impressed with her dedication and hard work, and she received her first funding of 3 million rupees in 2012. Zivame is now worth over 681 crore rupees, has 800 indirect partners, and more than 60 offline stores.

Falguni Nayar - Nykaa

Falguni Nayar worked with Kotak Mahindra Group for almost 20 years and served as the MD for seven years. She recognised the potential in an online marketing platform, and her dormant dream to become an entrepreneur drove her to start her own beauty and lifestyle e-commerce company, "Nykaa," in 2012.

She has successfully curated more than 1500 brands, and Nykaa has a physical presence in more than 80 cities across the country. Nykaa, a unicorn startup, sells products from numerous leading national and international beauty and fashion brands and also has its own in-house beauty brand named "Nykaa Beauty." Nayar is India’s wealthiest self-made female billionaire. She is also the recipient of prestigious awards like "Business Person of the Year" and "Entrepreneur of the Year 2019" by EY.

Radhika Aggarwal - ShopClues

Radhika Ghai Aggarwal is the co-founder and current Chief Business Officer of Shopclues. ShopClues was founded in 2011 and is an online platform selling products ranging from technology to fashion. The company works towards empowering second and third-tier sellers to sell their products and establish their brand. In four years, Shopclues was valued at 1.1 billion dollars and joined the unicorn club.

The company had half a billion sellers and became India’s biggest e-commerce industry in 2016. Aggarwal won the 2016 Woman Entrepreneur of the Year award. She also won the CEO of the Year award in the same year. Shopclues was acquired by Qoo10 for $70 million in 2019. Aggarwal remains the Chief Business Officer (CBO) of the company. In 2021, Aggarwal started another company called Kindlife.com. It sells organic products in various categories.

Vineeta Singh – Sugar Cosmetics

Vineeta Singh is the co-founder of Sugar Cosmetics. She founded Sugar Cosmetics along with Kaushik Mukherjee in 2012. Singh, then 23 years old, turned down a 1 crore job offer from an investment bank to pursue her entrepreneurial dream. The journey wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Sugar Cosmetics is Singh’s third venture. Her first two failed ventures didn’t deter her from trying again.

Sugar currently has 8.5 million dollars in funding and 500 crore rupees in annual revenue. Singh's aim was to create cosmetic items specifically for Indian skin tones that would be produced and sold in India.

Suchi Mukherjee – LimeRoad

Suchi Mukherjee is the founder and chief executive officer of the e-commerce site LimeRoad. LimeRoad is an online fashion platform that was founded in 2012. She created LimeRoad with the aim of creating a platform that sells fashion and lifestyle products at an affordable price. LimeRoad is now one of the best female-founded fashion brands in India.

From building the right team to getting the right infrastructure with a high-speed and reliable internet connection, Mukherjee had to face numerous challenges. She received the coolest startup of the year award, the unicorn startup of the year award, the Infocom woman of the year, and the ET startup of the year award.