'Women entrepreneurs must focus on scale and good team'

Women entrepreneurs must focus on scale and building a good team, said Biocon chairperson Kiran Mazumdar Shaw on Thursday.

"As women, we must focus on building scale. If you don't build scale, I really believe you will be at a disadvantage. You cannot then build a credible business story," said Shaw at panel discussion 'Promoting Women Entrepreneurship' at Invest Karnataka 2016 Global Investors Meet (GIM).

According to Shaw, scaling process is a daunting task without creating a good team.

"A good team with critical competencies about business modeling, about finance and about marketing is a very important contributor for scaling and success," she said at the discussion attended by women entrepreneurs from across Karnataka.

Shaw considers her bio-technology company Biocon as the first startup to emerge from Bengaluru and narrated the difficulties she faced while staring it.

"In 1978, the bankers did not have faith in me that I being a woman am capable of setting up a business. Loans for women entrepreneurs were classified under the handicapped and backward classes category," she revealed.

She thanked Karnataka State Industrial Investment and Development Corporation (KSIIDC) and Karnataka State Finance Corporation (KSFC) for coming to her aid and approving the loan.

The panel discussion also hosted a sister city initiative agreement signing between Bengaluru and San Francisco. Additional Chief Secretary Ratna Prabha and Sister City Initiatives co-chair Nandini Tandon exchanged the agreement.

Earlier, Women Entrepreneurs Guidance Cell (Mahila Udyamavani Cell) was launched to give a shot in the arm for women entrepreneurs.

--Indo-Asian New Service

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