3 out of every 1,000 women in Telangana are entrepreneurs

Hyderabad: Telangana, which has put in place various measures as part of its newly unveiled MSME policy to boost the number of women entrepreneurs, has as many as 58,644 women entrepreneurs registered on the Centre's Udyam portal. This works out to 3.1 women entrepreneurs per every 1000 women in Telangana, which has a total female population of over 1.88 crore.
The state was ranked among the top three in the country when it comes to the share of women-led MSMEs, as per a NITI Aayog report on women entrepreneurship in India.The report, ‘Decoding govt support to women entrepreneurs in India' prepared in Oct 2022, ranks Telangana third after West Bengal (23.42%) and Tamil Nadu (10.37%) with 7.85% of MSMEs being owned by women.
As per the report, women-owned MSMEs accounted for 20.37% of the total, with 12.39 million out of the total 60.84 million proprietary MSMEs in India then. In fact, the report pointed out that over 99% of women-run MSMEs are in the micro sector with most of them being single-person microenterprises and that only about 17% of women-owned enterprises have employed workers, of which 95% operate with less than six workers. "As the size of the enterprise increases, the proportion of women-led enterprises decreases," the report had observed.
Confederation of Indian Industry's Indian Women Network (CII-IWN) Telangana chairperson Dr Anupama Panduru pointed out that in Telangana, nearly 93.6% of women entrepreneurs are in the nano and micro segment of the MSME sector. She also pointed out that today as there are several women entrepreneurs in the state that are in the manufacturing sector, CII-IWN had recommended an industrial park approach to the state govt along with the need for specific amenities like worker accommodation, need for subsidies to bring down the cost of starting up for women entrepreneurs, and access to a skilled labour pool.
K Rama Devi, chairperson, ALEAP WE-HUB, an Atal Innovation Centre, said that while finance is no longer a major constraint for women entrepreneurs today, sustaining the venture is a big problem as they lack marketing heft.