Women form one-third of early stage entrepreneurs in India: Survey

Around 61% people consider entrepreneurship as a good career choice

When it comes to entrepreneurship, Indian women are fast catching up with men as entrepreneurs, as a recent global survey pointed out that among all early-stage entrepreneurs, around one-third or 32% are women.

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) Survey 2013, touted as the largest annual study of entrepreneurial dynamics in the world, stated that most of the early stage entrepreneurs fall in the age group of 25-34 years.

Around 61% of people in India consider entrepreneurship as a good career choice, it said, adding that a large number of women are getting involved in starting and owning-managing new businesses in the country.

Further, the survey that makes distinction between different types of entrepreneurship and how these contribute to economic growth and job creation, says that in India 38.8% entrepreneurs are necessity entrepreneurs, while around 35.9% fall under the opportunity entrepreneurs category. In comparison, 33.9% entrepreneurs in China are necessity driven while 35.9% are opportunity driven.

Individuals who start businesses in response to a lack of other options for earning an income are deemed to be necessity driven entrepreneurs, while those who start businesses with the intention to exploit an opportunity are identified as opportunity driven entrepreneurs.

In 2013, entrepreneurs in the Asia Pacific & South Asia were an average of 1.87 times more likely to be an improvement-driven opportunity entrepreneur than a necessity-driven one. This ratio was around 0.92 in India.

"In comparison to other countries in Asia Pacific & South Asia, India has fairly good perception about the presence of good opportunities for starting businesses in the next six months (41% of all respondents). They are also likely to believe they have the skills and knowledge necessary to start businesses (56%). It implies that people are willing to act on the opportunities they see and that they believe they are capable of starting a business," the report said.

Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) Report 2013 further states that the Total Early-stage Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA) Index for India stands at 9.9% compared to 10.7% for Singapore, 14% for China and 12.7% for the US.  Interestingly, India took part in the survey after 12 years.

The 2013 report, which marks the 15th anniversary of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) covered more than 197,000 respondents globally have been surveyed and approximately 3,800 national experts on entrepreneurship participated in the study across 70 economies.

"The samples in the GEM 2013 study represent an estimated 75% of the world’s population and 90% of the world’s total GDP," it claimed.

In India the survey was conducted by GEM India National Team comprising the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDI), Ahmedabad, Wadhwani Centre for Entrepreneurship Development (WCED) at Indian School of Business (ISB), and Institute of Management Technology (IMT), Ghaziabad.

"Around 3000 adults aged 18 to 64 years old from all five regions over the nation were surveyed. In all 296 start-ups were surveyed," informed Sunil Shukla, chief faculty, EDI, Ahmedabad and national team leader of GEM, India.