IDEX ACCELERATOR 2015

June 1, 2015 Authored by: NATALE DANKOTUWAGE

Gender Equality Report

Women Entrepreneurs – Breaking the Glass Ceiling

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Gender Equality Report Women Entrepreneurs – Breaking the Glass Ceiling

Executive Summary

Studies state that only 20 percent of women engage in the startup ecosystem globally. When one observes Bangalore’s start up ecosystem, one finds that the engagement of female entrepreneurs is far less than men. Noticing this, I planned to do something to empower women entrepreneurs. The direction of change I’d like to see is an increase of engaged and active women entrepreneurs in Bangalore. Thus, I worked towards creating space for current and aspiring women entrepreneurs to meet, network and mentor one another.

To address this issue, I’d work on creating space for dialogue, I’d host three events. One un-conference titled “Millennial Women – Finding their place in Bangalore’s Startup Ecosystem”, a pod-cast of a roundtable discussion titled “Women Leaders – Breaking the Glass Ceiling” and finally assist as an organizer of a Startup Weekend called SHE Bangalore.

What I found was that there are significantly far less women than men in Bangalore’s start up space. Nevertheless, they do exist. Their male counter-parts gravitate towards tech oriented start ups. Whereas women gravitate towards creative, well-being oriented and social impact focused entrepreneurship. Further, they were usually of an upper-middle class background. Having the finances or familial support to leave their jobs and begin their own ventures.

Overall Objective:

Women in Asia face a range of challenges from poor access to education; gender based violence and ingrained discrimination which limits their political and economic opportunities.

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Nevertheless, statistics show that women make up half of the population in Asia. United Nation estimates that the Asia Pacific Economy would earn around $89 Billion annually if women were able to achieve full-economic potential.

Fortunately, Millennial Women or better known as Generation Y are creating rapid shifts. This generation is known as being made up of individuals between the ages of 13 to 33, born roughly between 1982 and 1994. When it comes to their careers and workplace- the majority are known for being highly ambitious, educated, optimistic, dedicated and thriving for well-rounded lifestyles.

With the Global breakdown of old systems i.e. Wall Street collapsing, Arab Springs and Women College graduates outnumbering men – the world is changing. I felt, it was important to create platforms that strived to share millennial women’s voices, values and visions.

Over the course of three months, I’d host sessions that brought together millennial women who have established thriving careers for themselves in the midst of Bangalore’s male-dominated start-up ecosystem.

These sessions have exposed me to the breadth of possibility for young women in the startup sector. Their careers range from fostering social enterprises, to mentorship, facilitating global start-up relationships, legal or recruitment support for entrepreneurs. Though they all explore different angles of the startup ecosystem, at the core these women shared a desire to push the status quo and pave a new way professionally.

Event 1 - Un-Conference - Millennial Women – Finding Their Place in Bangalore’s Startup Ecosystem

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Event Outl ine:

• Introductions from attendees and expectations they had from the event • Semi-Talk: 5 minute presentation where a video was shared to fuel the session • Gender Intelligence Test: papers were handed out and everyone wrote down one thing that

describes a woman.

• Introduction from Speakers: Each speaker introduced themselves and how their work related to start-ups and why they are working in the start-up sector.

• Moderated Discussion: Each question was open to the panel and the audience

Why Un-conference

My first session was a moderated un-conference. Four speakers were invited and an audience of over twenty-five individuals attended. I decided to conduct a un-conference because I wanted to empower attendees to share their expertise, an unfiltered exchange of innovative ideas and create an environment where everyone felt like an expert. I didn’t want participants to be limited to only questions. I wanted them to feel comfortable to make comments and share facts. I also didn’t want the event to solely focus on the panelists. I wanted the discussion to move back and forth between the speakers and viewers. I played a role as a moderator. I asked questions, kept the session between two-hours and ensured that discussions didn’t get out of hand.

Topic of Discussion

The topic of discussion was “Millennial Women – Finding their place in Bangalore’s Startup Ecosystem.” I utilized Bentley University’s recent “Women in Business” study to fuel most of the conversation about the current situation for women in business. I explored statistical evidence revealing

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positive impressions of women in the business environment. For example 80 percent of the business leaders found that women were better suited for business success in terms of organization, communication and interpersonal skills. In contrast to a study conducted in Canada where 2,400 women who left jobs in Fortune 500 companies because they felt excluded, less values, male-dominated environment and lack of opportunity.

We also explored statistical evidence presenting a rising interest in the millennial generation to enter entrepreneurship, due to their well-positioned understanding of technology, collaboration and desire to redefine success on the basis of impact rather than money. However, only seven-percent of startups launched globally in 2013 were female-led.

I’d explore with the speakers how they’d been able to be an exception to this statistic. I’d explore with the panel and audience what their thoughts were on the statistics found.

Speakers:

Paridhi Singh –

Digital marketing specialist of a start up titled Cialfo. Cialfo is a web app that provides resources to students that want to attend Ivy League schools. She was a research fellow at Harvard, where she studied genetics. Her work with Cialfo consists of analyzing customer behavior online and strategizing how to optimize the search engine.

Ankita Sharma

Leads Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Swissnex. Her work consists of connection the world and Switzerland in science, education, art, & innovation. Swissnex is an initiative of the Swiss Government. It’s strives to support the internationalization of Swiss institutions and companies. Participate and interact with Swiss and local partners. They network with universities, institutions and companies across the world. They also facilitate programs strategies and exchange.

Manojna Yeluri

She is the founder and principal legal consultant at Artistik License. She is an independent legal consultant and a researcher passionate about working with artists and professionals in various creative industries. Based out of Bangalore and Hyderabad, she assists and educates artists and entrepreneurs on a range of legal issues via workshops, lectures and consultation.

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K injal Soali

Is a Senior Business Development Executive at Multi Recruit. Multi Recruit is a top recruitment consultancy service provider in Bangalore. They take up the time consuming process of hiring and help find highly professional service for all businesses.

Event 2 - Podcast: Women Leaders – Breaking the Glass Ceiling

Event Outl ine

• 10 Women, who were predominately founders of their own start ups, were invited.

• 10 Chairs placed in a circle

• One device to record the discussion.

• Initial introduction from start up founders

• Introduction by Mentor

• Introduction by Investors

• Each speaker explored the challenges and opportunities for women entrepreneurs

Why Podcast

Thinking how best to sustain these conversations and share my discoveries, I felt it was imperative I had some way to account for the discussions I’ve had. By recording the discussions, I was able to go back and listen to the podcast. Through this process I was able to truly hear what was being said. When running such sessions the very act of moderating can prevent me from truly grasping what is being expressed. But by having leisure to return to the podcasts and tune in once more to what was shared, allows me to capture the nuances that I may have initially missed. It also allows for me to share the podcasts with those who did not attend the session. I was able to promote the discussions via social media.

Podcast

Women Led Start Up Founder Perspective:

https://soundcloud.com/avec_danko/women-led-start-ups-breaking-the-glass-ceiling

Investor or Venture Capital Perspective:

https://soundcloud.com/avec_danko/investor-perspective-is-there-investment-for-women

Mentor Perspective:

https://soundcloud.com/bhive-workspace/why-having-a-mentor-is-important-for-entrepreneurs-especially-if-youre-a-woman

Part ic ipant Perspective:

https://soundcloud.com/avec_danko/women-led-start-ups-breaking-the-glass-ceiling-women-on-the-board

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Describe

The Silicon Valley has yet to produce a female Zuckerberg or Gates. The Valley has been described as a “bro-community”, with venture capital firms described as “Boys Clubs”. Babson College conducted a study of over 6,517 companies from 2011 to 2013 and found that only 2.7 percent of these companies had female CEO’s.

Bangalore has been described as the Silicon Valley of India. And it looks like the story isn’t much different. The start-up and investor ecosystem is saturated with men. However, statistics show that in 2025 Millennial workers will make up 75% of the global workforce, of which 58% will be women.

Sheryl Sandberg is Chief Operating Officer of Facebook. In June 2012 she would be the first woman to sit on the board of directors of Facebook. Her career trajectory has been a comforting exception to a male dominated corporate leadership. Nevertheless, in her Ted Talk “Why we have too few women” she expressed the lack of women in leadership roles. She shared that how from 199 heads of state that only 9 are women. There are only 13 percent of women in parliament. Since 2000 only 16 percent of corporations are led by women. And, the story remains the same amidst the start up ecosystem, where less than 20 percent are led by women.

Recognizing a discrepancy between the numbers of women leaders in comparison to male leaders, I decided to invite a select group of female leaders in Bangalore to a roundtable discussion which was recorded and shared as a live podcast and disseminated widely throughout the startup ecosystem. Female led startups, Mentors and Investors were present for the dialogue. Participants discussed the challenges faced by women leaders, addressing questions such as: what are the greatest challenges and opportunities for women leaders? How should funders, backbone leaders, and other community leaders support the growth of women leaders?

Speakers

Niti Shree

She is the national lead for Headstart clubs and headstart network foundation. The head of Communications at Lets Venture. An ECE engineer by degree, she is also an independent PR consultant for startups. Recently, she became the first Indian woman to get selected for the prestigious Draper University entrepreneurship bootcamp. She is an AISEC alumnus and has volunteered with many non-profit organizations like Teach for India and Bhumi. Having worked at MNCs like Cognizant and Amazon, she switched to PR with Aim High Consulting. Having worked as a volunteer with Headstart Network Foundation for over 2 years now, she has helped impact many aspiring/existing entrepreneurs direction/indirectly.

Mydhil i Bayapunedi –

She is an Educational Technologist trained at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. In the past she has worked in EdTech Startups as well as Global Tech companies such as Google, YouTube and Microsoft. She

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is not working on YoungCurrent.com a news resource for children (aged 8 -16) that aggregates child-friendly news articles and personalized the experience to each child based on their reading ability.

Bhavana Toor

She is a women’s leadership coach and business mentor. She is the founder of Shenomics.com, a success and leadership coaching platform for professional women, helping women create extraordinary impact in their careers and their lives. Previously, she has mentored thousands of young social entrepreneurs across India’s premier educational institutions as the CEO of the National Social Entrepreneurship Forum.

Shalini Nautiyal

Shalini left her job at Infosys in 2012 to become the Founder of Coffee Mug Ideas. She has over 7 years strong experience in leading teams, product development and technical deliveries.

Anupama Prakash

She is the co-Founder of Workbench Projects. She is a master of ceremonies, operations and logistics, making sure that everything is right where it needs to be. Her passion is to create creativity: developing the right conditions to spark and set off a thousand creative pursuits. She is also the founder director of the Open Minds Education Initiatives, which explores alternative teaching methods. She was also an Ex-Director of Brains for Science and Technology Aided Reforms in Society (BrainSTARS).

Priyanka Jain

Co-founder, Director Business Development, Bangalore based. Priyanka brings to the team over 5 years of experience in strategic consulting in India across a range of business functions and sectors. She also spent a year in UK, completing an in-depth study of the economics of renewable energy as part of earning her MBA. She also worked in electricity storage and distributed generation in London, eventually publishing a research paper on grid shift and peak reduction through distributed electricity storage. Priyanka has regularly volunteered in the non-profit sector and has worked with underserved communities in India and Africa with organisations such as Technoserve, Atlantic Accelerator, and GSMA. Priyanka holds an MBA from University of Cambridge, Judge Business School, and has a B. Tech in Chemical Engineering from IIT Bombay.

Malini Gowrishankar

An electronics and communications engineer by profession, Malini Gowrishankar was a part of the Management Program for Women Entrepreneurs (MPWE), conducted by Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB). With over seven years of experience in the IT industry, Malini has donned several hats: voiceover artist, radio jockey and creative writing.

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S tartup Weekend: SHE Bangalore

Event Outl ine

• Three Days – 54 Hours • Day One: Networking, Icebreakers, Pitch ideas and Vote on the top 6 pitches.

• Day Two: Get into teams, work on business ideas and one on one with mentors • Day Three: Pitch concepts before investors and receive feedback

Why Start up Weekend:

Startup Weekend is a global grassroots movement of active and empowered entrepreneurs who are learning the basics of founding startups and launching successful ventures. It is the largest community of passionate entrepreneurs with over 1800 past events in 120 countries around the world in 2014. The non-profit organization is head quartered in Seattle, Washington by Startup Weekend organizers and facilitators can be found in over 200 cities around the world. From Mongolia to South Africa to London to Brazil, people around the globe are coming together for a weekend log workshops to pitch ideas, form teams, and start

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companies. All Startup Weekend events follow the same basic model: anyone is welcome to pitch their startup idea and receive feedback from their peers. Teams organically form around the top ideas (as determined by popular vote) and then it’s a 54 hour frenzy of business model creation, coding, designing, and market validation. The weekends culminate with presentations in front of local entrepreneurial leaders with another opportunity for critical feedback.

Describe Session:

India is home to a whole community of unsung heroes in the field of women entrepreneurship. Ladies who have led the most normal lives as homemakers or gone through tumultuous times but still have displayed the kind of grit and brilliance a woman entrepreneur needs to succeed. What more, they have put these qualities into action and emerged as winners in the end.

This session explores the immense entrepreneurial talent possessed by the female population in Bangalore. Through SHE Bangalore, enthusiastic women entrepreneurs will be inspired by ideas/products/teams and explore starting their own ventures. This constructed experienced will help women to churn out their creative and entrepreneurial faculties. It will help them construct a business plan, connect with other individuals and be inspired to launch their own companies.

The founder of Work Bench and SHE Bangalore Anupama describes herself as the “Alpha Male”. She was inspired to create workbench to promote the DIY culture (Do it yourself). However, she’d recognize that this space was dominated by men. Electrical and plumbing are saturated by men. However, she’d wonder why more women did not engage in this space. Her work with workbench is to promote these disciplines.

She’d share that women did not have lesser opportunities. And that her work regarding SHE Bangalore wasn’t to address the divide. Rather, it was a means of exploring the interests of women entrepreneurs. She wanted to discover the yearnings of aspiring female entrepreneurs.

The overall mission of this session is to encourage the local entrepreneurial community of women. Enabling more women to explore the process of starting one’s own ventures by giving them the opportunity to exercise their talents and build working business models. Encouraging women to enter co-working/co-collaborative spaces and create what they want and break stereotypes in the field. Showcase host and sponsors to be harnessed in the city to ensure long-term engagement of both the mentors and participants.

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Solutions: How to Improve Things for Women Entrepreneurs

My desire to explore this issue came under the assumption that the challenges women face outweigh the opportunities. However, upon dialoguing with several women in the startup ecosystem this very assumption was challenged.

In May 2015 Business World published an article titled “Have a Woman’s Point of View”. They reported that According to Gender Diversity Benchmark 2011, India has the lowest national female labor force.

However, in this very article there was ample evidence that there appears to be a conducive and supportive work environment for women to rise to the top. For instance in India’s banking sector women CEO’s are quite common. ICIC Bank (Chanda Kochhar) and Axis Bank (Shikha Sharma), among the largest in the private sector, are led by women. A clutch of foreign subsidiaries, like J.P. Morgan (Kalpana Morparia) and Morgan Stanley (Aisha De Sequeira) have woman at the top. This is a great achievement for India, considering that among the 10 biggest banks by assets in the US, not one has a woman CEO.

Further, the Indian government is taking steps towards ensuring more participation of women at the top. The Indian government just passed a new law requiring public companies to have at least one woman on the board. Further, industry associations such as, Ficci, Nasscom and CII are being actively pushed by the Indian government to identify competent professional women as board candidates.

However, when this government led solution for gender inequality was brought up with participants and speakers at my sessions it was controversial. Participants felt that the progress of women should be natural. That such laws, of hand selecting women to lead at the top, would only proliferate more nepotism and favoritism for certain women over others. By creating a law, it was argued, that you wouldn’t be enabling women at the bottom to climb the ladder and achieve top positions.

Some participants saw the value of the law, arguing that culture flows from top to bottom. Therefore, it’s important to set an agenda that supports women to guide from the top. Lean in: Women, Work and the Will to Lead from Sherly Sandberg explores how men on the board will not think about women related issues, unless there is representation by women at the top.

It was also argued that there needs to be accountability for whether the mandate has worked and evidence of positive impact post-implementation.

Startup Founder Perspective

Nevertheless, my desire to create a platform for women to network and empower one another was appreciated and supported by female participants. I’d learn that other women exploring entrepreneurship were working towards building more supportive ecosystems as well. For example, the “We” Initiative was created by Headstart as a means of bringing together women entrepreneurs. Headstart Network Foundation is a Sec 25 company, established in the year 2008 with the vision to ‘Change the World through Entrepreneurship’. It has been among the first few, to have driven informal and formal meets of aspiring and inspiring entrepreneurs in India. Today, Headstart Network Foundation is the largest network of early stage startups in India.

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The ‘We’ group hopes to help women understand that it should not be intimidating to start one’s own businesses. They recognize that there are “Gaps” in the Startup Ecosystem. In most events held in Bangalore most attendees are men. This makes women feel uncomfortable to attend. Also, in Bangalore most events are tech centric and most women find such events unappealing. As most women led companies are not tech centric. Thus, “We” was launched one-month ago as a means of addressing this gap. In order to work towards creating events/mentorship that appeal to a wider expression of entrepreneurship.

Mentor Perspective

The importance of mentorship for women was explored by Bhavana Toor founder of Shenomics. Bhavna wanted to do something with her career that was more social impact oriented. She recognized that there weren’t enough women engaging in the entrepreneurship space in Bangalore. She recognized two things. One, there were ecosystem issues. How do women entrepreneurs get funding? Secondly there were internal barriers. She recognized that women held themselves back. She argued that this was a result of cultural factors. For example, she’d argue that women communicate and manage differently than men.

So, she’d go on to discover Shenomics. Shenomics is a leadership and business platform for women where she works one on one with women. She explores where they’d like to be, what’s getting in the way, limiting beliefs and why they’re not thinking bigger.

Investor Perspective

I sat down with Niti Shree of Communications at Lets Venture to gage the investor perspective. Lets Venture was founded by Shanthi Mohan a serial entrepreneurs. She started her first company in the 90’s and sold it in the US. What Lets Venture recognizes is that for early-stage start ups the main concern for a start up is fundraising. Thus, Lets Venture acts as an online platform to raise Angel Investment. It works as a market place for investors and start ups.

Niti Shree Lead of Communications at Lets Venture shared that Female Founders shouldn’t have issues raising funds. For example, she’d mention, founder of Wishberry was a woman herself. Wishberry is India’s largest funding platform for creative projects. Thus, she argued that women entrepreneurs were equally capable and supported as men.

Therefore, Niti Shree of Let’s Venture felt there was no issue of inequity between women and men within Bangalore’s startup space. Nit Shree will be the first Indian Woman to get into Silicon Valley investor Timothy Draper’s prestigious entrepreneur-boot camp.

However, speakers at the roundtable podcast pointed out that at Let’s Ignite - an Angel Summit organized by Lets Venture- Barthi Jacob was one of the few female investors in attendance. At the event, most investors were men. Turns out there are only two women (Barthi Jacob included) in India’s Venture Capital space. And out of the thirty startups invited to Let’s Ignite, only one had a female co-founder. The company was called “Find my Shoe”.

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Niti Shree of Let’s Venture accounted for this ratio by arguing that this wasn’t inequality. Rather it was a reflection of choice. She’d argue, if you want to be a part of the investment space you need to think about how the woman who made it did it.

Conclusion

I partnered with Workbench projects to plan and implement SHE Bangalore. SHE Bangalore is a platform that provided women with one-weekend to ideate build and launch a company. Building off of the Startup Weekend Model, women are put into teams and partnered with mentors to build their companies.What SHE Bangalore aspires to achieve is to inspire more women to share their ideas and build companies.

The process allowed me to address some of the challenges brought up in the dialogues: lack of effective networking, mentorship and access to investors. In 54 hours women were given access to a team of aspiring female entrepreneurs, experienced mentorship and an opportunity for feedback from investors.