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Top 10 case studies on entrepreneurship in india.

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These are the reasons why businesses are getting started in 2023, 29% of entrepreneurs say they wanted to be their own boss, 17% were dissatisfied with corporate life, 16% wanted to pursue their passion, and 12% say the opportunity presented itself. Entrepreneurship in India has witnessed a remarkable surge over the past few decades. With a burgeoning economy and a dynamic ecosystem, the country has produced a plethora of successful entrepreneurs and startups. In this article, we delve into the top 10 case studies on entrepreneurship in India, each offering unique insights, lessons, and inspiration for aspiring business leaders.

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Table of Content Top 10 Case Studies on Entrepreneurship in India

Top 10 Case Studies on Entrepreneurship in India

Flipkart: revolutionizing e-commerce.

Founders : Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal

Year Founded : 2007

Source: Safalta

Key Takeaway : Customer focus and innovation can disrupt traditional industries and lead to exceptional growth.  

Upgrade your skills with this digital marketing course:  Click here for Details

OYO: Disrupting the Hotel Industry

Founder : Ritesh Agarwal

Year Founded : 2013

Ritesh Agarwal's story is a prime example of young entrepreneurship in India. OYO, which began as a budget hotel aggregator, has expanded globally, becoming one of the world's largest hospitality chains. Ritesh's vision is backed by a robust technology platform, and streamlined and standardized hotel operations, offering affordable, quality stays.

Key Takeaway : Identifying a market gap and using technology to address it can lead to rapid business expansion.

Read more:  Top 12 Examples of AI Case Studies in Content Marketing

Byju's: Changing the Face of Education

Founder : Byju Raveendran

Year Founded : 2011

Byju, the edtech unicorn, was born from Byju Raveendran's vision to make learning engaging and accessible. He built a unique platform offering interactive online classes for students across India. Byju's became one of the world's most valuable edtech companies, catering to millions of students.

Key Takeaway : Leveraging technology for education can create substantial opportunities and impact a wide audience.  

Paytm: A Digital Payment Pioneer

Founder : Vijay Shekhar Sharma

Year Founded : 2010

Paytm, initially a mobile recharge and bill payment platform, became a pioneer in digital payments in India. Vijay Shekhar Sharma's journey from a small town in Uttar Pradesh to building a fintech empire is an inspiration. The company's success can be attributed to its innovative approach and the ability to adapt to evolving market needs.

Key Takeaway : Flexibility and adaptability are crucial in the ever-evolving fintech industry.

Zomato: From a Restaurant Guide to a Food Delivery Giant

Founders : Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah

Year Founded : 2008

Zomato began as a restaurant discovery platform but swiftly evolved to include food delivery services. The founders, Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah, navigated challenges like fierce competition and the logistical complexity of food delivery. Their ability to pivot and cater to diverse customer needs allowed them to expand globally.

Key Takeaway : Adapting to changing market demands and diversifying offerings can lead to substantial growth.

Related article:  Top 10 Ways to Achieve Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Strategies

MakeMyTrip: Trailblazing in Online Travel

Founders : Deep Kalra

Year Founded : 2000

Deep Kalra founded MakeMyTrip at a time when e-commerce was in its nascent stage in India. Over the years, the company transformed the way Indians booked travel. With continuous innovation and expansion, MakeMyTrip is now a leading online travel company in the country.

Key Takeaway : Identifying an untapped niche and being a pioneer can result in long-term success.

Nykaa: Redefining Beauty Retail

Founder : Falguni Nayar

Year Founded : 2012

Falguni Nayar, a former investment banker, ventured into the beauty and cosmetics industry with Nykaa. The e-commerce platform revolutionized the beauty retail sector by offering a vast range of products, including both luxury and affordable brands. The company's success underscores the importance of understanding consumer preferences and delivering a seamless online shopping experience.

Key Takeaway : Customer-centricity and a diverse product range can lead to rapid growth in e-commerce.

Suggested:  Nykaa Case Study on Digital Marketing Strategies 2023

Freshworks: SaaS Unicorn from India

Founders : Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy

Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy co-founded Freshworks with the aim of creating a customer engagement software company. The company's suite of SaaS products has gained global recognition. Their approach to building a robust software platform with a focus on customer satisfaction exemplifies their journey from a Chennai-based startup to a SaaS unicorn.

Key Takeaway : A strong product and customer-centric approach can drive international success in the SaaS industry.

Lenskart: Redefining Eyewear Retail

Founder : Peyush Bansal

Peyush Bansal recognized the need for a reliable and convenient way to purchase eyewear in India. Lenskart introduced an online platform for buying eyeglasses and contact lenses. By integrating technology, Lenskart streamlined the purchase process, offering a wide range of eyewear and personalized services.

Key Takeaway : Identifying gaps in the market and providing innovative solutions can create new business opportunities.  

Rivigo: Revolutionizing Logistics

Founders : Deepak Garg

Year Founded : 2014

Deepak Garg's Rivigo introduced an innovative approach to logistics and transportation in India. Their relay model and tech-enabled trucking system optimized supply chain operations, reduced transit times, and enhanced efficiency. Rivigo's success in a traditional industry showcases the power of technology-driven solutions.

Key Takeaway : Applying technology to traditional sectors can lead to significant improvements and growth.

These 10 case studies on entrepreneurship in India provide a diverse range of success stories, demonstrating the versatility, resilience, and innovative spirit of Indian entrepreneurs. Each of these entrepreneurs identified market gaps, harnessed technology, and adapted to changing dynamics to build successful businesses. Their journeys serve as inspiration for aspiring entrepreneurs and underscore the limitless possibilities that await those willing to take risks and pursue their visions in the Indian business landscape.

What is entrepreneurship?

Who is an entrepreneur, what qualities make a successful entrepreneur, what is a business plan, and why is it important for entrepreneurship, what is "bootstrapping" in entrepreneurship, what is a business model.

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Top 10 Inspiring Indian Entrepreneurs Success Stories: That Will Inspire You!

• December 12, 2023

Table of Contents

Aspiring entrepreneurs in India are always looking for role models and success stories to motivate and guide them. We can count tons of success stories from various websites to join their tribe or affiliate link. But most of the stories don’t mean value to us. We’re looking for real-life success stories that we can learn from to make our own business successful.

As a result, we’ve decided to publish an article for real-life heroes who have carved out their paths with unique business models become role models for other aspiring entrepreneurs, and have their own success stories.

With their incredible adventures, these entrepreneurs have not only achieved enormous success but have also inspired others. Check out this digital marketing course for crafting a digital transformation with a successful blueprint if you’re interested in starting your own business model. 

Read on to learn about their successes and what you can learn from them, and create your own success stories as an entrepreneur.

Top 10 Inspiring Entrepreneur’s Success Stories from India 2024

There’s no shortage of inspiring entrepreneurship stories from India. Despite the immense challenges of starting and running a business in the country, Indians have found ways to persevere and innovate, creating new products and services that have helped lift millions out of poverty. In this blog post, we’ll explore some of the most inspiring success stories from Indian entrepreneurs, highlighting the key lessons that you can learn from their experiences.

India is home to some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world. Despite having to endure numerous challenges, these business owners have found success by persisting and innovating. From e-commerce to technology, these entrepreneurs have made their mark in a variety of industries. Here are ten inspiring Indian entrepreneur’s success stories that will undoubtedly motivate you to achieve your goals and become a successful entrepreneur like other inspiring entrepreneurs in India.

Now, let’s get to know about the top 10 best inspiring success stories from Indian entrepreneurs;

Here is the list of the top 10 Indian entrepreneurs you must know about. After reading this article, you will definitely get inspired by our Youngest Entrepreneurs in India. Now, let’s dive into it. 🏄‍♂️

1. Sachin Bansal & Binny Bansal – Flipkart

Sachin Bansal & Binny Bansal are the #1 Youngest Successful Entrepreneurs in India out of other Indian Entrepreneurs .

In a garage, Sachin and Binny Bansal founded Flipkart, a modest eCommerce company, and the rest, as they say, is history. One of India’s most successful business people sold Flipkart to Walmart for $16 billion in 2018. 

▶️ Quote By Flipkart Founder – 1

“ ‘No’ is a very difficult word, and more so in our culture, where people quickly tend to take offence. But a ‘no’ which makes your business and customer say ‘yes’ is worth the while.” — Sachin Bansal

Along with Binny, the IIT graduate used to transport books on his own and pioneered the wave of eCommerce marketing. Sachin was in charge of the company’s SEO, design, marketing, and content. Binny handled the delivery and backend operations well. 

What began as an INR 4,00,000 business gained immediate acclaim and, finally, an incredible bid from Walmart. Bansal created everything from the ground up, starting with the initial iteration of the website. Through his present firm, Navi Technology, he has been investing actively. Flipkart is undoubtedly one of India’s most successful startup success stories.

“Flipkart” – Sachin and Binny Bansal’s path – would be familiar to everyone. Both of them, who graduated from IIT-D and previously worked for Amazon, presented a similar concept to the Indian market. 

▶️ Quote By Flipkart Founder – 2

“For an entrepreneur work is not seen as ‘work’, it is passion, you like it you want to do it.” — Binny Bansal

Flipkart began selling online books only in 2007 and has since expanded to sell practically everything, ranging from home items to personal care products, educational materials, and workplace stationery. According to an article on Yourstory.com, mobile accounts for more than half of Flipkart’s income, and mobile has been at the heart of Sachin’s strategy since the beginning. 

Sachin admitted in an interview that creating Flipkart was the dumbest thing he has ever done and that everyone around him thought he was mad, according to a Quora.com post. However, it has recently purchased Myntra for around INR 2000 crore. Flipkart has now been promoted to the top five-billion-dollar start-up club, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal, and it has a valuation of $11 billion. 

Learn more about Flipkart’s Digital Marketing Strategies – A Complete Case Study!

❇️ Social Media Accounts of Sachin Bansal

Twitter – NA Facebook – NA Instagram – @sachin_bansall LinkedIn – NA

❇️ Social Media Accounts of Binny Bansal

Twitter – @binnybansal Facebook – NA Instagram – NA LinkedIn – @binnybansal

2. Bhavish Aggarwal – Ola Cabs

Bhavish Aggarwal is the #2 Youngest Successful Entrepreneur in India out of other Indian Entrepreneurs.

After two years as a Microsoft research team member, Bhavish Aggarwal followed in his iconic footsteps. He started Ola Cabs, a multibillion-dollar company. With his zeal and colourful vision, Bhavish, an IIT Bombay alumnus, set the way for his success. 

▶️ Quote By Ola Founder

“All of us have an entrepreneur in us. Entrepreneurs are not driven by fear; they are driven by the idea to create impact.”

In 2015, Bhavish was the youngest person on Forbes’ list of India’s wealthiest individuals, with co-founder Ankit Bhati. After confronting insufficient and expensive cab services, he created his own cab firm. Ola makes it simple to hire a taxi anywhere in the country. Its popularity grows in minor and major cities, broadening Bhavish’s reach. 

He has since established himself as a successful entrepreneur. Ola Cabs is India’s most successful cab firm, with over a million customers.

❇️ Social Media Accounts of Ritesh Aggarwal

Twitter – @bhash Facebook – @bhavish.aggarwal.7 Instagram – @bhavishaggarwal LinkedIn – @bhavishaggarwal

3. Ritesh Aggarwal – Oyo Rooms

Ritesh Aggarwal is the #3 Youngest Successful Entrepreneur in India out of other Indian Entrepreneurs.

Ritesh Aggarwal was never scared to explore new things or take risks. And the success of Oyo Rooms, which he founded in 2013, has rewarded out handsomely. He became the world’s second-youngest billionaire in the year of the outbreak. 

Ritesh did not attend college in the traditional sense. He dropped out of the Indian School of Business and Finance before completing his education. Isn’t it frightening? Ritesh’s lack of a college degree has no impact on his success. The Thiel scholarship was given to Oyo, and he hasn’t worried about the past, and he moved forward. 

▶️ Quote By OYO Rooms Founder

“Hire people not for today but for 2-3 years from now, and let them grow with the company.” — Ritesh Aggarwal

His primary concern was always to provide low-cost accommodation. Oyo continues to offer regardless of location. Oyo has increased in recent years and is estimated to be worth more than $1.1 billion by 2020. Ritesh is only 27 years old, yet he has come a long way.

With over 500 hotels and 50000 rooms, “OYO Rooms” is India’s largest budget hotel brand. It was founded in 2012 by Ritesh Agarwal to provide basic, trustworthy accommodations, and it has since changed the face of the Indian hospitality industry. According to an article on Yourstory.com, the company now partners with 4,200 hotels in over 170 locations, booking up to a million room nights every month. 

OYO Rooms has been a massive success because it is dedicated to addressing the issue of budget hotel cleanliness, availability, and affordability across the country. OYO works with several hotels to obtain rooms that may be rented out to those who wish to use its services. 

According to a Yosuccess.com post, OYO Accommodations provides tourists with efficient and standardised rooms at low costs, with a current evaluation of approximately 370Cr. 

Twitter – @riteshagar Facebook – @riteshagarwall Instagram – @riteshagar LinkedIn – @riteshagar

4. Nandan Reddy, Rahul Jaimini & Sriharsha Majety – Swiggy

Nandan Reddy, Rahul Jaimini & Sriharsha Majety are the #4 Youngest Successful Entrepreneurs in India out of other Indian Entrepreneurs .

Apart from Zomato, Swiggy has quickly established itself as one of the most popular meal delivery services. On the other hand, food delivery did not have a solid footing when it initially entered the market. 

In truth, Reddy and Majesty had intended it to be a Bundle courier service. After meeting Jamini, though, they altered their minds. Swiggy was founded as a result of its strong network building. Swiggy has raised a lot of money since its inception in 2013. 

▶️ Quote By Swiggy Founder

“Growth is about learning and evolving with the different variables and moving parts” — Sriharsha Majety

Providing exceptional customer service has always been a priority for business owners. Swiggy’s efficient logistical procedures also ensure that clients receive their meals on time. 

Swiggy has conquered the difficulty of hiring employees remotely who bring food on time. The unicorn start-up is exploding with the three founders, and the business is successfully running up to date.

❇️ Social Media Accounts of Nandan Reddy

Twitter – @nandanreddy Facebook – NA Instagram – NA LinkedIn – @nandan-reddy-1830659

❇️ Social Media Accounts of Rahul Jaimini

Twitter – @rahuljaimini Facebook – NA Instagram – NA LinkedIn – @rahuljaimini

❇️ Social Media Accounts of Sriharsha Majety

Twitter – @harshamjty Facebook – NA Instagram – NA LinkedIn – @sriharsha-m-563aa217

5. Vijay Shekhar Sharma – Paytm

Vijay Shekhar Sharma is the #5 Youngest Successful Entrepreneur in India out of other Indian Entrepreneurs.

Vijay Shekhar established Paytm and continues to lead it. And there’s no denying that Paytm’s trust has fuelled a meteoric surge in digital payments across the country. 

Sharma has a track record of producing brilliance, dating back to his student days at DTU when he founded Indiasite.net. He got $1 million for it. He subsequently founded One97 Communications, which later became Paytm. 

▶️ Quote By Paytm Founder

“There are two kinds of companies in the world one is who BUILD and the second who BUY”. — Vijay Shekhar Sharma

Paytm has revolutionised the face of digital payments, and it shows no signs of slowing down any time soon. As a result, Vijay Shekhar’s popularity continues to soar. 

We all know that we don’t have phones without Paytm money, which shows that Paytm has successfully reached out to people and will continue to do so in the future. 

❇️ Social Media Accounts of Vijay Shekhar Sharma

Twitter – @vijayshekhar Facebook – @vijayshekhar Instagram – @vssx LinkedIn – @vijayshekhar

6. Sorav Jain – Digital Scholar & echoVME

Sorav Jain is the #6 Youngest Successful Entrepreneur in India out of other Indian Entrepreneurs.

Sorav Jain is the founder of echoVME Digital & Digital Scholar. He is also known as India’s top digital marketing influencer, trainer, author, and speaker. Sorav started his career at 17 as an SEO executive and baggage 10 years of knowledge in this digital marketing field which made him become a successful digital marketing and social media marketing expert who started his venture with a small team of 30 members in 2011 in the name of echoVme, a digital marketing agency based out of Chennai.

He has been successfully running his business for the past 11 years, which gives him the courage to take a risk by simultaneously running an agency-style based digital marketing training institute called Digital Scholar in 2019 and the echoVME Digital .

▶️ Quote By Digital Scholar & echoVME Founder

Marketing you’re presence on social media is as important as creating your presence. “The only fashion that never fades: Digital Marketing”. — Sorav Jain

Initially, Digital Scholar invited students to their place and started teaching them how agency-style digital marketing works. But the time of the pandemic turned the tables around, taking Digital Scholar to the rooftop when people began to focus on passions online. Sorav Jain became famous on Instagram as a digital marketing influencer with 306k+ followers within a short period. You can follow his business insights here @Soravjain .

Sorav was named one of the Top Social Media Marketers under 30 by Social Samosa. He was named one of the “ Top 25 Social Media Professionals of India “ by Global Youth Marketing Forum. 

Sorav also works as a corporate trainer for 2020MSL, Hanmer MSL, Times Internet, Genpact, Shriram Value, Bosch India, Preethi Appliances, Hexaware, Communicate India, and a variety of other IT, PR, digital, and advertising firms. 

Sorav runs one of Facebook’s most popular Digital Marketing groups, Digital Marketing Question and Answers on Facebook, which has more than 60,000+ members which is a vast community where you can always participate with questions and answers you have.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Digital Scholar (@digital_scholar)

Digital transformation is what Every business owner looks for, also one who needs a feasible blueprint to understand better how to build a solid digital marketing presence.so, Suppose you are searching for a Digital marketing guru who teaches you to become a digital marketing expert within four months. In that case, you must try his online digital marketing course to upskill in the digital marketing field.

❇️ Social Media Accounts of Sorav Jain

Twitter – @soravjain Facebook – @soravjain & @SoravJainDigital Instagram – @soravjain LinkedIn – @soravjain

🗣️ Sorav Jain’s TEDx Talk

How Sorav turned his Internet addiction into a business empire, and you can do it as well!! In this talk, Sorav Jain shares his highs and lows while choosing an unorthodox career. Sorav Jain is an entrepreneur and one of India’s top digital and social media marketing experts.

He is also a skilled consultant, trainer, author, and speaker. Sorav started his career at 17 as an SEO executive and has about 10 years of Industry experience. Sorav has been listed among the top 25 social media professionals in India under the age of 30. Sorav has trained more than 100,000 professionals. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.

7. Deepinder Goyal – Zomato

Deepinder Goyal is the #7 Youngest Successful Entrepreneur in India out of other Indian Entrepreneurs.

Foodiebay is a name that no one recalls. Although Deepinder Goyal founded it, he is more known for Zomato, the rebranded version of Foodiebay.

Zomato began as a food-reviewing website. Food bloggers were encouraged to give candid reviews of each restaurant’s service and food quality. It also provided menu cards in high demand among Deepinder’s coworkers, prompting him to launch Zomato. Before launching Foodiebay, he graduated from IIT Delhi and worked at Bain and Company. 

▶️ Quote By Zomato Founder

“Everything is solvable. You have to put your mind to it.” “Focus on building a business that solves a real problem.” “You can’t say that If I don’t have access to capital, I can’t build a company.” — Deepinder Goyal

Deepinder’s has become one of India’s most well-known food-entrepreneur success stories in the previous decade. Other than India, the corporation has operations in Portugal, New Zealand, and Qatar. Zomato also bought Urbanspoon and launched a meal delivery business in the United States and Australia. 

When they first started Zomato, they didn’t have enough money, but as they say, hard work pays off. Zomato is a big success nowadays, as we all know. 

According to an article on Yosuccess.com, it is the largest of such media in Asia and one of the greatest globally, having a solid & single presence in over 10,000 cities across 22 countries.

Zomato has also ventured into the world of digital marketing. It enables firms to expand without incurring new expenditures. 

One of the most significant advantages of Zomato is its marketing campaign, as we all know. Once the notification gets on, you will be getting full urge messages in your mother tongue, which will significantly support the company’s growth in the future too.

This online restaurant platform was founded in 2008 to assist Indians in discovering new tastes in a variety of meals. “Zomato” is a one-stop shop for all your appetites, whether for food, drinks, or alcohol. It’s an online restaurant guide that includes home delivery, cafés, and nightlife! 

Learn more about Zomato’s Digital Marketing Strategies – A Complete Case Study on it!

Twitter – @deepigoyal Facebook – @deepigoyal Instagram – NA LinkedIn – @deepigoyal

8. Varun Alagh and Ghazal Alagh – Mama Earth

Founder of Mama Earth – Varun Alagh Co-founder of Mama Earth – Ghazal Alagh

Varun and Ghazal are the #8 Youngest Successful Entrepreneurs in India out of other Indian Entrepreneurs.

Varun and Ghazal are the trailblazers behind Mamaearth; not only that; they are real-life partners. Mamaearth is the online-first game plan that relies upon posting offers on the D2C stages like Amazon, Flipkart, etc., and their inescapable arrangements, close by the proposal of things displayed at actual standard stores.

Story Behind the StartUp

Varun and Ghazal understood that the childcare products they ran over harmed their baby’s skin and that there could have been no other safe choices since they got a child youngster to manoeuvre carefully.

Since they couldn’t find reliable things in India, the couple chose to import trustworthy childcare items made elsewhere, all else equivalent.

▶️ Quote By Mama Earth Founders

“How you drive growth is more important than anything else” — Varun Alagh “Success only comes to those who can stick through crazy times. As long as you persevere, things eventually fall in place.” — Ghazal Alagh

Later, the gathering started mentioning things from the US, yet they ended up being costly and inadequately planned. So the partners joined together and started creating their own childcare items under the brand name Mamaearth.

Mamaearth Product and Competence

Mamaearth, in a roundabout way, rivals MNCs like Himalaya and Johnson and Johnson, as well as online electronic business areas like Nykaa. Mamaearth items contend straightforwardly with a couple of deeply grounded and new organizations, selling an assortment of youngster-related things like frills, clothing, and toys.

Mamaearth Achievement and Benefit

• Mamaearth products revenue reached 110 crores in 2020.
• Mamaearth product beat revenue of RS 500 crores in 2020.
• Mamaearth outright pay expanded by 101% to INR 952.4 Cr in 2022 from INR 472.1 Cr as we compare from the past year.

Learn more about Mamaearth’s Digital Marketing Strategies – A Complete Case Study on it!

❇️ Social Media Accounts of Varun Alagh

Twitter – @VarunAlagh Facebook – @varun.alagh Instagram – @varunalagh LinkedIn – @varunalagh84

❇️ Social Media Accounts of Ghazal Alagh

Twitter – @GhazalAlagh Facebook – @ghazal.alagh Instagram – @ghazalalagh LinkedIn – @ghazal-alagh-9755a0128

9. Falguni Nayar – Nykaa

Falguni Nayar is the #9 Youngest Successful Entrepreneur in India out of other Indian Entrepreneurs.

Falguni Nayar established Nykaa, one of India’s biggest magnificence and design organisations. The pioneer and President of Nykaa are prestigious as the most extravagant independent lady in India and is positioned tenth among the world’s most extravagant independent ladies.

▶️ Quote By Nykaa Founder

“Women need to allow the spotlight of their lives to be on themselves. I hope more women like me dare to dream for themeselves.” — Falguni Nayar

Falguni’s total assets may vary by around Rs 57 crore in a hurry in a year. They gained the audience with The organisation’s slogan, “Your Beauty, Our Passion,” which quickly grabbed women’s and youngsters’ eyes.

We are mindful that Nykaa reached this success through their successful campaign assets for acquiring consideration through dispersing enormous and persuading offers.

Let’s see the story of Nykaa and how they accomplished 32 billion bucks in 2022.

Story of Nykaa

Everything began in 2012 when Nykaa was established. On the journey for a promising business opportunity in India, Falguni Nayar found an irregularity in the magnificence beauty products market in India, which was not on pace with the beauty item’s extension in different nations, despite critical interest, attributable to an absence of item accessibility in numerous districts.

This incited her to help establish Nykaa with her significant other, Sanjay Nayar. Starting as a web-based association, the stage ultimately changed to an omnichannel partnership with Amazon, Flipkart, and many more.

Falguni worked in the corporate area for more than 25 years before setting out on her pioneering venture when Nayar was moving toward 50.

Even though initially they faced so many hurdles in marketing and campaign, now they have a pillar foundation of digital marketing and campaign success.

Nykaa Profit and Revenue

The benefit of the beauty care products monster Nykaa has accomplished 32 billion out of 2022, where the business details hope to arrive at twofold the CAGR in the future.

Learn more about Nykaa’s Digital Marketing Strategies – A Complete Case Study!

❇️ Social Media Accounts of Falguni Nayar

Twitter – NA Facebook – @falguni.nayar.5 Instagram – @falguninayar LinkedIn – @falguni-nayar-845065a0

10. Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy – Fresh Works

Founder of Fresh Works – Girish Mathrubootham Co-founder of Fresh Works – Shan Krishnasamy

Girish and Shan are the #10 Youngest Successful Entrepreneurs in India out of other Indian Entrepreneurs.

Freshworks Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy launched the organisation in Chennai in 2010, offering several product suites to meet client needs. Representative objectives, including deals with CRM programming, enrollment gadgets, client assistance helpdesk programming, and many more wanted top sass products, are delivered by Fresh Works.

▶️ Quote By Fresh Works Founders

“It’s not the software. It’s about the way software is supposed to be built, the way it’s supposed to be delivered, implemented and consumed.” — Girish Mathrubootham

Both coworkers had previously worked for Zoho Corp, one of India’s most excellent SaaS businesses. Zoho Corp and Freshworks are both rivals and essential players in this industry.

Freshworks sold 28.5 million regular offers on September 22, achieving an intraday high of $48.75 in the market.

So, what is the story of these two important Indian entrepreneurs who have eternally influenced Indian entrepreneurs with their backtalk sass business?

The Story Behind the Progress of FreshWorks,

Girish and Krishnamoorthy first met through Zoho. They have comparable frequency and the knowledge to start another backtalk organisation by communicating customer care by selling customer support solutions since the choice Zendesk is raising its expense where even an organisation has experienced major shock with the cost change.

He managed to move on with this fantastic idea. So, Girish and Krishnamoorthy left Zoho to start their own Sass organisation with only six people in 2010.

It took around eight years of hard labour for the organisation to increase its revenue to $100 million. Freshdesk was soon rebranded to Freshworks, the success of which followed and supported it in establishing its base camp in the United States, afterward carrying the organisation more like a greater portion of its user base.

Challenges they Faced

Freshworks and Zoho’s dispute took a severe turn in 2020 when Zoho filed a claim alleging that Freshworks used private data to build a business. The backup company Zoho has also accused Freshworks of poaching its employee’s and customers’ confidential details. The battle is still ongoing.

Freshworks Success and Profit

According to their website, the profit of this mysterious Sass company this year at 2022 is $493.0 – $497.0 million.

❇️ Social Media Accounts of Girish Mathrubootham

Twitter – @mrgirish Facebook – @rathnagirish Instagram – @girish.mathrubootham LinkedIn – @girish1

Hello, readers! So, this article showcased ten inspiring Indian entrepreneur’s success stories who have achieved success in such a short span of time. These success stories are sure to motivate and inspire you to achieve great things in your life and career.

Indian start-ups are on the rise, and there’s no stopping them now. If you are an aspiring entrepreneur or have an existing business, it is time to get inspired by these success stories and work even harder to achieve your own goals.

“Wishing you the best in creating your own inspiring success stories!” Today, I’d like to talk about something inspiring: creating your own success story. No matter what your background is or what you’re doing now, it’s always possible to achieve great things. All it takes is hard work, dedication, and a bit of luck. So, go out there and make it happen! I wish you all the best in your endeavors.

Get in touch with us, and we’ll be happy to help you set up or grow your business and also help you in becoming a successful entrepreneur, so you can have your own success stories and inspire the upcoming generations.

Thanks for reading our success stories!

1. Who is India’s No. 1 Entrepreneur?

According to Forbes magazine, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal are among India’s most successful young entrepreneurs.

2. Why do Indians Succeed in Business?

Indians usually find the possibility, opportunity, and risk factors in any sector and start developing their own business journey. If you need any impressions check out the list of successful entrepreneurs’ stories on this blog.

3. Who is India’s Most Successful Entrepreneur?

The most affluent businessman in the twenty-first century is Mukesh Ambani. However, more aspiring business owners are on the list, competing against one another in this cutthroat industry. For inspiration, read this story on the most successful Indian entrepreneur.

4. Who is the Youngest Millionaire in India?

The founder of Zepto, Kaivalya Vohra, is regarded as the youngest Indian to appear on the Hurun Rich List and has a net worth of more than Rs 1,000 billion.

5. Who is the Most Valuable Startup in India?

echoVME, founded by Sorav Jain, has shaken up the Indian start-up scene with its unique approach to digital marketing. The company’s focus on digital marketing is driven by data which provides valuable digital marketing services to its clients across the globe. This has resulted in echoVME fast becoming one of the most valuable startups in India.

Written By Digital Scholar

Digital Scholar is a premier agency-styled digital marketing institute in India. Which offers an online digital marketing course and a free digital marketing course worldwide to elevate their digital skills and become industry experts. Digital Scholar is headed by Sorav Jain and co-founder Rishi Jain, who are pioneers in the field of digital marketing. Digital Scholar’s blogs touch upon numerous aspects of digital marketing and help you get intensive ideas of different domains of digital marketing.

Comments on “ Top 10 Inspiring Indian Entrepreneurs Success Stories: That Will Inspire You! ”

Really motivated by these real stories , you all inspire us from within and help us to work even more harder and to achieve our goals.

Many thanks to all, Poornima S B

Absolutely amazing inspirational stories. Thanks a lot

Thank you Pallavi.

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100 Indian Startup Success Stories for the new age entrepreneur [2022 Updated]

Each entrepreneur puts in his 110% effort to make their startup successful. Nevertheless, that’s not the only factor in formulating the perfect recipe for Indian success stories. Successful startups in India are built on persistence, mentorships, disruptiveness & market requirements.

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India has established itself as one of the biggest startup hubs around the world. Every other day a new startup emerges from the ocean of opportunities to make it up to the list of startup success stories in India. However, we must remember that 90% of startups fail in their initial stages.

In this article, we’ll be talking about the successful startup stories in India that have been able to build their empire to become the emperors of their niche marketplace. From food delivery to ecommerce, these 12 inspiring startup stories will encourage you to be a part of startup success stories today.

Fact: According to reports by ET ( 1 ), around 86% of the men continue to dominate the startup space, with women entrepreneurs constituting 14% of the startup share.

100 Inspiring Successful Startup Success Stories in India

These 100 startups have been able to survive amidst the struggling economy of our nation to emerge as the top successful business stories in india:.

• Bombay Shaving Company
• Ecomm Express
• Urban Ladder
• PolicyBazaar.com
• Housing.com
• BankBazaar.com
• EaseMyTrip.com
• Bare Anatomy
• Treebo Hotels
• Clear Car Rental
• KillerLaunch
• AddressHealth
• TravelTriangle
• Bewakoof.com
• GoaBrewing Co
• Skillsmatic
• Avaada Energy
• Skyroot Aerospace

100 Inspiring Startup Stories in India:

Launch: 2013

Founders: Ritesh Agarwal

Industry: Hospitality

Estimated Valuation: $16 billion

Ritesh Agarwal, the founder of the homegrown unicorn Oyo, has established itself as one of the largest hotels and hospitality chains worldwide, with operations in over 800 cities across 80 countries, including India, the US, China, Europe , China, and more.

Airbnb was the biggest source of inspiration for Ritesh, who started on his journey of being one of the best entrepreneur success stories as a teenager.

Fact: Ritesh launched Oravel Stays in 2012, later relaunched as Oyo in 2013.

Visit their website here .

Launch: 2010

Founder: Vijay Shekhar Sharma

Industry: Fintech

Estimated Valuation: $15 billion

Paytm started as a digital wallet in its initial days but has transformed into a completely new payment platform. The fintech service has emerged as the top fintech company even after facing fierce early competition from brands like Freecharge.

Fact: Paytm’s user base grew from 125 million to 185 million three months post demonetization.

Vijay Shekhar Sharma, who was struggling to make ends meet with Rs 10 in his pocket, tasted victory the hard way, and today, he stands as the founder of the billion-dollar homegrown unicorn.

3. Flipkart

Launch: 2007

Founders: Sachin Bansal & Binny Bansal

Industry: Ecommerce

Estimated Valuation: $24 billion

The Walmart acquired ecommerce company Flipkart stands as the largest ecommerce platform in India. Today, the ecommerce platform has expanded its business horizons by foraying into the video streaming industry with Flipkart Originals.

Fact: The first customer of Flipkart was a young engineer from Mahbubnagar, Telangana.

Sachin Bansal & Binny Bansal started as an online bookstore that made around 20 successful shipments in its first year of functioning. It was not late before the platform started grabbing people’s attention that making it the top online retail market in history.

Launch: 2014

Founders: Nandan Reddy, Rahul Jaimini, & Sriharsha Majesty

Industry: Foodtech

Estimated Valuation: $3.3 billion

The viral food delivery startup has marked itself as one of the inspirational stories of success that started in its Bengaluru neighborhood, where six delivery executives were covered by only 25 partner restaurants.

Today, the food delivery firm has over 2.1lakh delivery executives across 300+ cities in India. Currently, the company processes over 1.4 million food orders daily across the country.

Note: Swiggy recently received funding of $1 billion from Naspers and Tencent Holdings

Visit their site here .

5. Ola Cabs

Founders: Bhavish Aggarwal, Ankit Bhati

Industry: Mobility

Estimated Valuation: $6.2 billion

Ola Cabs, started by IIT-B graduates Bhavish and Ankit, has emerged as the most prominent Indian mobility service provider in the country. That offers its services across 50 cities in India and is evenly spread across countries, including the UK, Australia, and New Zealand.

The idea of Ola, a cab aggregation startup, came from Bhavish’s terrible experience. At the same time, he was traveling from Bengaluru to Bandipur, where the driver of his cab stranded him in the middle of nowhere over a failed negotiation deal.

6. BookMyShow

Launch: 1999

Founders: Ashish Hemrajani, Parikshit Dar & Rajesh Balpande

Industry: Online Ticket Booking

Estimated Valuation: $1 billion

We see BookMyShow as a stable platform in the online ticket booking sector. It is considered as a one-stop platform to book online tickets , especially for movies.

Surprisingly, the upheaval of BookMyShow is one of the most motivational success stories that showcase the power of perseverance. The platform currently provides services across five countries with over 30 million customers.

Fact: The initial capital invested in BookMyShow was just Rs 25,000.

7. MakeMyTrip

Launch: 2000

Industry: Travel Agency

Estimated Valuation: $23.5 billion

MakeMyTrip is India’s leading online travel company that provides online services like travel packages, hotels, flights, rail, bus tickets , etc., to its clients. Founded by IIM-A alumni Deep Kalra, the success of MakeMyTrip has been recognized not only nationally but internationally as well. The company was even listed on NASDAQ.

Fact: MakeMyTrip was initially launched to cater to the needs of NRIs for their Indo-American trips back and forth.

Launch: 2008

Founders: Byju Raveendran, Divya Gokulnath

Industry: E-Learning

Estimated Valuation: $5 billion

Byju’s started as a mere e-learning platform but has grown to become one of India's most popular and highly trusted ed-tech brands.

The platform founded by Byju Raveendran & Divya Gokulnath provides online tutoring sessions to students ranging from study material of class VI to material about competitive exams like IAS, CAT , GRE, etc.

Fact: Byju has registered 35 million users on its learning app with 2.4 million paid subscribers.

9. BigBasket

Launch: 2011

Founders: Hari Menon, VS Sudhakar, V S Ramesh, Vipul Parekh, Abhinay Choudhari

Estimated Valuation: $1.2 billion

The online food and grocery buying platform allow users to buy products ranging from food supplies, grocery , beverages, personal care products, bakery supplies, etc. BigBasket has marked its presence in over 25 cities across India, with Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi-NCR , Hyderabad, Chennai , Pune, and Ahmedabad being the top cities.

Fact: Hari told a publication that despite being in the business for five years, their core team still works on a 7- to 12:30 am model.

Launch: 2012

Founder: Falguni Nayar

Industry: Ecommerce- Fashion & Beauty

Estimated Valuation: $750 million

The IIM-A alumnus Falguni Nayar left her 9 to 5 job at Kotak at 50 to pursue her dream of establishing Nykaa. The platform was launched to develop a one-stop platform of beauty products in India, making it the first beauty-exclusive ecommerce platform .

Fact: The online beauty & fashion platform opened its first offline store at T3 Terminal, IGI Airport, in November 2015.

Launch: 2015

Founder: Vikram Chopra

Industry: Automotive

Estimated Valuation: $242.6 million

Cars24 is the number 1 used car selling and buying platform in India that Vikram Chopra founded in 2015. Cars24 enables you to sell or buy second-hand cars hassle-free. The platform has over 100 offline stores pan India that enables a person to evaluate the value of his car with direct consultation from the Cars24 employees.

Fact: Cars24 launched an ad campaign #ByeByeDrive, which focussed on the sentimental value connected with ‘your car.’

12. PharmEasy

Founder: Dharmil Sheth, Dhaval Shah, Mikhil Innani

Industry: Ecommerce- Healthcare

Estimated Annual Valuation: $64.7 million

PharmEasy is an online pharmaceuticals delivery platform that assists by delivering the required medicines & diagnostic test reports to its patients. It currently functions across eight cities in India, including Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Jaipur, Delhi, Noida, and Bangalore.

13. Instamojo

Founders:   Sampad Swain, Aditya Sengupta, Akash Gehani, Harshad Sharma

Industry: Fintech Software and Services Industry

Estimated Valuation: $200 Million

Instamojo is an on-demand payment startup success stories that enable entrepreneurs to develop, run, and extend their online business. With transactions becoming a vital part of any industry, Instamojo is developing ‘Payment Links,’ allowing companies to get started with online payment collection quickly.

Instamojo also provides a suite of services and products that allow sellers to create an online store, uncover insights into their store behavior, and further scale up their successful startups in India.

Fact: Instamojo has a customer base of 1200000 plus startup stories.

14. Unacademy

• Founders: Roman Saini, Gaurav Munjal, and Hemesh Singh

Industry: Education

• Estimated Valuation: $510 Million

Unacademy is a digital site that provides material for big competitive exams and delivers brief tutorials in videos on various topics that can be viewed free of charge. It enables prospective students to promote self-learning better through startup stories.

Partnering with the best minds and offering classes on any topic in different languages is the dream of the startup success stories in Unacademy. The entire community will benefit from these classes.

15. Nykaa.com

• Founders: Falguni Nayar

Industry: E-commerce

• Estimated Valuation: $750 Million

Nykaa is among the successful startups in India website with a range of beauty and health items for men and women. They also offer comprehensive content, product reviews, beauty how-to videos, expert articles, and e-beauty magazines. Nykaa goods are authentically purchased directly from startup stories manufacturers to have distribution experience.

From the Sanskrit word ‘Nayaka,’ which means an actress or a spotlight, Nykaa’s primary purpose is to celebrate every woman's star and be her trusty companion.

Fact: Nykaa is an Indian startup success stories brand that sells beauty, wellness, and fashion products.

16. MobiKwik

• Launch: 2009
• Founders: Bipin Preet Singh and Upasana Taku
• Industry: Digital Wallets

Estimated Valuation: $1 Billion

MobiKwik is one of the successful startups in India by being the most significant mobile wallet for the redundancy of personal portfolios. Indian consumers can store money in a virtual wallet and then use it across channels (mobile, desktop, register, text, and IVR). It allows Indian consumers to pay utility bills and shop with registered traders in their wallets.

MobiKwik is an outstanding startup stories. Every penny in your pocket is well taken into consideration. Additional security settings on all mobile devices on which it operates can also be used.

• Founders: Kabeer Biswas, Ankur Agarwal, Dalvir Suri, Mukund Jha
• Industry: Consumer Service
• Estimated Valuation: $56.4 Million

Dunzo is a hyper-local startup stories delivery app that catches anything and everything in a city and delivers everything. Dunzo also runs a bike taxi service in Gurgaon and offers it in Bengaluru, Delhi, Gurgaon, Pune, Chennai, and Hyderabad.

These successful startups in India will change how you move things, shop, and never get to your house. The App links you to the closest seller that can order, receive, and deliver supplies from any shop or restaurant in the area.

Fact: The company's headquarters in Bangalore has over 1 million users.

18. RazorPay

• Founders: Shashank Kumar and Harshil Mathur
• Industry: Microcredit, Mobile payment, Payment system, and Financial Technology
• Estimated Valuation: $450 Million

Razorpay is a platform for successful startups in India to accept, process, and disburse their product suite of payments. It provides access to all modes of payment, including credit card, debit card, net banking, UPI, and popular wallets, including Jiosaw, Mobikwik, Airtel Money, PayZapp, and Ola Money.

Razorpay is the only converged payment system company in India that enables your startup stories to accept, process, and disburse payments through its software suite.

Launch: 2018

• Founders: Riteish malik
• Industry: Collaboration, Coworking, and Real Estate
• Estimated Valuation: $30 Million

Innov8 Coworking is a Y-Combinator-based startup success stories in India that support workspaces and community startups. They provide high-quality workspaces (managed private offices and coworking areas). The first Thought space in India is Innov8 Coworking, a successful startup in India.

They promote the participation of people from all walks of life, whether they be entrepreneurs, employees, freelancers, designers, or just willing to work in a highly competitive environment. They are presently based in Chennai, Noida, Gurgaon, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chandigarh, and throughout India.

Fact: The Innov8 Space In DLF Cyber Hub is a fully managed office space startup story with 500 seats.

• Founders: Zishaan Hayath, Hemanth Goteti
• Industry: Education Industry
• Estimated Valuation: $38.3 Million

Toppr is among the first successful startups in India with post-school devices for personalizing learning. They support candidates in training for various colleges, boards, and rigorous exams.

They study student behavior and create adaptive paths with infinite combinations of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data. This ensures every student's unique and personalized learning experience of startup stories.

Note: The Toppr startup success stories app is free for its users except for some specific video lectures.

21. Bombay Shaving Company

• Founders: Shantanu Deshpande, Raunak Munot, Deepu Panicker, and Rohit Jaiswal
• Industry: Personal Service
• Estimated Valuation: $494.2 Million

Bombay Shaving is a successful startup in India that focuses on developing a variety of shaving care, beard care, and skincare products. The startup stories brand specializes in men’s grooming, personal care, shampoo, beard care, skincare, and homemade soap.

Bombay Shaving Company started with the idea that shaving should be more than a worldly task for most men. Before, after, and after the shaving process, they installed a rubber device.

22. FirstCry

• Founders: Supam Maheshwari and Amitava Saha
• Industry: Retail Distributors
• Estimated Valuation: $100 Million

FirstCry is a baby and toy online startup stories website. More than 20000 products are from more than 250 major brands, such as Mattel, Ben10, Pigeon, Funskool, Hotwheels, Nuby, Farlin, Medela, Pampers, Disney, Cinderella, Gerber, Zapak, Mee Mee, etc.

It is among the successful startups in India with a high-quality online shopping experience, fast, reliable delivery service, and prompt customer care. It offers the best products and brands at the best price.

Fact:   FirstCry is Asia’s most extensive online shopping startup success story for kids and baby products.

• Founders: Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah
• Industry: Consumer Services
• Estimated Valuation: $2 Billion

Zomato offers customers web and mobile startup stories for searching, ordering, and discovering restaurants. It provides global information and online ordering about restaurants.

Furthermore, Zomato provides food delivery, table reservations, and premium membership services for restaurants to allow users to search, rate, and review restaurants. This also enables users to create successful startups in India networks for trustworthy recommendations for fellow food lovers.

Fact: The number of monthly users on Zomato is around 20 Million.

24. CarDekho

• Founders: Amit Jain
• Industry: Automotive Industry
• Estimated Valuation: $75 Million

CarDekho.com is India’s leading startup stories search engine for vehicles that allow consumers to purchase decent cars. This startup success stories website and application have great automobile content, including expert reviews of car brands and models that are in Indian hands, detailed information and prices, comparisons, and videos and pictures.

The organization has relations with several successful startups in India car suppliers, including more than 4000 car dealers and a variety of financial companies to promote the purchasing of cars.

Founders: Richa Kar

Industry: E-Commerce

Zivame is an online lingerie startup stories with hundreds of Indian designs. By type, brand, color, and size, customers can easily search the lingerie by identifying what to wear!

Zivame reflects its offline entrepreneur stories shopping experience with detailed pages of products, low-cost, quick shipping, and a customer-friendly trouble-free return policy. Whether you’re an Indian woman or a man, Zivame is about creating a shopping experience online startup success stories.

26. Ecom Express

Founders: K. Satyanarayana, Manju Dhawan, Sanjeev Saxena and A.Krishnan

Industry: Delivery/E-Commerce/Logistics

Ecom Express Private Limited is a startup stories that Indian Express Industry veterans promote. This startup's success stories have over 100 years of diverse and vibrant experience in the Indian Express Industry.

The entrepreneur stories are built to cater to the diverse needs of the rising electronic commerce market through leaps and bounds. There are no startup stories adequately prepared to serve the demands of this rapidly growing sector that are changing daily.

27. Urban Ladder

Founders: Ashish Goel and Rajiv Srivatsa

Estimated Valuation: $119 Million

Urban Ladder aims to create well-equipped, beautiful homes in Urban Indians for home solutions on startup stories. The exquisite range of furniture by Urban Ladder is soon becoming popular with shoppers in highway companies with over 1000 items and 25 categories, such as wardrobes, sofas, beds, and so on.

The furniture is carefully curated with design insights from the experienced design team of Urban Ladder and delivered by the proprietary logistics team of Urban Ladder startup success stories for safe door deliveries.

Fact: Urban Ladder is one of the best entrepreneur stories in this field, making furniture buying an enjoyable task.

28. PolicyBazaar.com

Founders: Alok Bansal, Avaneesh Nirjar, Manoj Sharma, Tarun Mathur, Yashish Dahiya

Industry: Auto Insurance/Commercial Insurance/Finance

PolicyBazaar operates an online life assurance startup stories that analyze financial products and compares them to general insurance. PolicyBazaar is a well-known startup success stories for purchasing people.

Its mobile insurance and comparison entrepreneur stories give the user information about products. Users can compare and analyze financial products, such as medical, life, travel, or motor insurance, ULIPs, and other investment products at low prices.

Fact: PolicyBazar accounts for almost 25% of life coverage in India and over 7% of the local health insurance startup stories in India.

29. JustDial

Launch: 1997

Founders: V.S. Mani

Industry: Information Services/Internet/Local/Search Engine

Estimated Valuation: $235 Million

JustDial provides users across India with local search startup stories on multiple platforms such as a website, a motive site, apps (Android, iOS, Windows), phones, and text (SMS). Just Dial Ltd is the number 1 startup success stories local search engine.

Justdial’s user entrepreneur stories have also begun ‘Search Plus.’ These apps are designed to make various daily tasks simple for users to perform and access through an app.

Note: On Android, iOS, Windows, and Blackberry platforms, Justdial Apps are available and can deliver mobile internet user-based startup stories on location.

30. Limeroad

Founders: Ankush Mehra, Manish Saksena, Prashant Malik, Suchi Mukherjee

Industry: E-Commerce/Fashion/Internet/Shopping

Estimated Valuation: $15 Million

Limeroad is a startup stories that brings you a love of products and gives you the possibility of creating your own space, taping into hidden talents, making your look and collections, and helping you to share this second opinion with friends in your creations.

We wanted to find LimeRoad as the digital startup success stories counterpart of the Grand Trunk Road in the 16th century. This road has changed the trade face of the Indian entrepreneur stories subcontinent.

31. Housing.com

Founders: Abhimanyu Dhamija, Abhishek Anand, Advitiya Sharma, Amrit Raj, Neeraj Bhunwal, Rahul Yadav, Ravish Naresh, Rishabh Agrawal, Sanat Ghosh, Saurabh Goyal, Snehil Buxy, Vaibhav Tolia

Industry: Internet/Online Portals/Real Estate

Estimated Valuation: $105 Million

Housing.com is the fastest-growing online real estate startup stories. They have created a unique property search startup success stories that fill the gaps left in the market due to simplifying the search for a home without fake listings and endless site visits.

Conducted by passionate troubleshooting professionals and backed by the world’s top investors, they are ready to be India’s most trusted entrepreneur stories.

Note: It can provide 3D models for each new project and deliver 360-degree views for each piece of land listed on Housing.com.

32. Epigamia

Founders: Ganesh Krishnamoorthy, Milap Shah, Rahul Jain, Rohan Mirchandani, Rohan Mirchandani, and Uday Thakker

Industry: Consumer/Fast-Moving Consumer Goods/Food and Beverage

Estimated Valuation: $13.9 Million

Epigamia is a premium natural Greek yogurt that promotes one cup of good living startup stories. They love the food at Epigamia and always find ways to get the best out of these startup success stories.

Greek yogurt was launched when Dahi was pressed for higher protein and infused with real fruit to stimulate taste buds. Since then, they have pushed the limits of what they can by creating goods that are tastier and better for their customers.

Note: Epigamia is an all-natural Greek yogurt entrepreneur stories that encourage one cup at a time, a safe way of life.

33. Bira 91

Founders: Ankur Jain

Industry: Brewing/Craft Beer/Food and Beverage/Wine And Spirits

Estimated Valuation: $246 Million

Bira 91 is a modern beer startup stories that provide the new world with flavorful beers. The startup success stories build an extensive product portfolio and push the global shift in products to more color and taste.

The company has five beers, Bira 91 White, Low Bitterness Wheat Beer, Bira 91 Blonde, Bira 91 Light, Bira 91 Low-Calorie Lunchtime, Strong, High Intensity, High Alcohol, and Bira 91 ‘The IPA,’ the first Indian IPA brewed and bottled. The company’s products have been designed to be of high-quality entrepreneur stories.

Fact: The 91 is derived from the country code you dial to India and are named initially after the Punjabi word for brother, Bira.

34. Vedantu

Founders: Anand Prakash, Pulkit Jain, Saurabh Saxena, Vamsi Krishna

Industry: EdTech/Education/Internet/Mobile/Mobile Apps/Tutoring

Estimated Valuation: $24 Million

Vedantu is an e-learning startup stories with an online platform for customized learning in real-time. It offers software startup success stories that connect tutors and students to one lesson for students online in real time.

Through Vedantu, they see how teaching and entrepreneur stories have been happening over the decades to reimagine and develop. Learning and education can change rapidly, and their goal in Vedantu is to speed up these changes.

Fact: The name ‘Vedantu’ also bears witness to its purpose.

Veda = ‘Knowledge’ and Tantu = Network.’

35. NoBroker

Founders: Akhil Gupta and Amit Agarwal

Industry: Commercial Real Estate/Mobile Apps/Property Management

NoBroker creates a peer-to-peer listing network for the efficiency of property transactions. The satellite allows a house to be bought, sold, and leased in the same place without charging brokerage fees.

NoBroker is a troubled real estate platform that allows the purchase/sale/rent of a house without paying any courier. NoBroker was started because we all felt it could not just be the way to find a new home to pay for reliable brokerage.

36. Chaayos

Founders: Nitin Saluja

Industry: Food and Beverage/Restaurants/Tea

Estimated Valuation: $40.8 Million

The chai adda, serving chai made freshly, is a contemporary interpretation of chaayos startup stories. Their focus is on helping your “Meri Wali Chai,” chai made precisely to the taste of their customers the minute they place their order, be it an adrak tulsi kadak chai or a paani Kam elaichi cinnamon chai.

With 12 add-ons startup success stories, its customers can make their chais in Chaayos in over 12,000 ways.

Note: Chaayos entrepreneur stories are currently present in Delhi, Mumbai, Noida, and Gurgaon.

37. BankBazaar.com

Founders: Adhil Shetty, Arjun Shetty, and Rati Shetty

Industry: E-Commerce/Finance/Insurance/Marketplace

Estimated Valuation: $280 Million

BankBazaar.com provides instantly customized online startup stories that offer instant rates on credit, mutual funds, and insurance products. You can search for these products on the Site or mobile app at once and compare and apply for them on this startup success story.

It has been designed with intelligent technology capabilities and integrated into the platform by more than 50 of India’s leading financial and insurance entrepreneur stories.

Fact: Consumers can track their application and troubleshoot problems through various channels such as the BankBazaar application, WhatsApp, Email, or Voice support.

38. Pee Safe

Founders: Srijana Bagaria and Vikas Bagaria

Industry: Fitness/Health Care/Wellness

Estimated Valuation: $20 Million

Pee Safe Toilet Seat Sanitizer startup stories Spray protects against germ-free and unsafe toiletries. It protects women against UTIs by spraying PEE SAFE on their toilets before use.

It should be a matter of no concern when you find a dirty public toilet while traveling or outside your house. Startup success stories Sprinkler on a seat ensures protection against illnesses such as UTI, gastroenteritis, or diarrhea.

Fact: PEE SAFE sanitizer entrepreneur stories are made of a rubbed IPA formulation which sanitizes the area within five seconds of use.

39. EaseMyTrip.com

Founders: Nishant Pitti, Rikant Pitti

Estimated Valuation: $211 Million

Easy Trip Planners Pvt. Ltd. (EaseMyTrip.com) is an online travel startup stories based in Patparganj Industrial Area, New Delhi. It covers flying tickets, reservations for hotels, rental cars, bus reservation,s and vacation packages of startup success stories.

The travel agency uses a Galileo-like computer booking system or sometimes books tickets directly from airlines. This entrepreneur stories offers both offline and online bookings for hotels and cars.

Fact: In places such as Bangkok, Singapore, Dubai, and the Maldives, the startup stories have their branches outside the world.

40. Bare Anatomy

Launch: 2019

Founders: Rohit Chawla and Sifat Khurana

Industry: Beauty/Health Care/Personal Health

Estimated Valuation: $1.15 Billion

Bare Anatomy is a women’s startup stories of next-gen personal care. Bare Anatomy is a perfect balance of heart and mind through innovative startup success stories supported by modern science, design, and creativity.

Starting with hair care products, including hair shampoos, hair oils, serums, and hairstylists, the entrepreneur stories begin with a view to revolutionizing the personal care and beauty industry.

Fact: ‘Bare’ means something basic and straightforward, without addition and ‘anatomy’ means studying something’s structure or internal functioning.

Founders: Aqib Mohammed and Shashwat Diesh

Industry: Consumer Goods

Estimated Valuation: $1 Million

Azah is a premium organic women’s wellness startup story. Azah sanitary pad entrepreneur stories resulted from wide-ranging research from thousands of Indian women with valuable feedback to help us create and develop a pad that solves their problems.

For example, 49 percent of women reported rash during their period in a survey of over 300 women. They have chosen to use organic cotton in their pads that do not irritate breathing.

Note: Azah Pads startup success stories are made of high-quality materials such as organic cotton and superabsorbent biodegradable products.

42. Milkbasket

Founders: Anant Goel, Anurag Jain, Ashish Goel, Ekwe Chiwundu Charles and Yatish Talavdia

Industry: Delivery Service/E-Commerce/Food and Beverage/Internet

Estimated Valuation: $ 50 Million

Milkbasket is a subscription micro delivery startup stories that every morning satisfies customer needs for daily dairy products and households. They deliver milk, bread, eggs, juices, butter, and other everyday items required daily, free of charge, right at the customer’s door.

The startup success stories were built on the unique Indian habit of delivering fresh milk daily at home. These entrepreneur stories are based in Haryana, India, but also provide to Hyderabad, Noida, Dwarka, and Bengaluru.

Launch: 2016

Founders: Sidharth Menda

Industry: Commercial Real Estate/Coworking/Property Management

Estimated Valuation: $350 Million

CoWrks is a first-class home-gathered coworking startup stories supplier built with love on Indian soil, creating spaces for startup success stories of every size.

Their sole objective is to bring together, fuel inspiration, and connect the largest community of working professionals worldwide. Its workspaces enable people to speak freely while they are doing some of the best work of their lives.

Note: With their standard and customized premium workspace solutions, CoWrks entrepreneur stories satisfy the various requirements of its members.

44. ZestMoney

Founders: Ashish Anantharaman, Lizzie Chapman, and Priya Sharma

Industry: Big Data/Consumer Lending/Financial Services/FinTech

Estimated Valuation: $56.9 Million

ZestMoney is a growing FinTech consumer lending startup story that use digital EMI without a credit card or a loan value. The startup success stories believe that everyone who holds a credit card or has a credit score should be able to pay at EMI.

ZestMoney was made available to millions of Indian consumers through mobile technology, digital banking, and AI. These entrepreneur stories receive support from world-leading digital finance investors such as PayU, Ribbit Capital, and Omidyar Networks.

Fact: ZestMoney is a real success stories where you can buy products on EMI from merchant partners without needing a credit card.

45. Treebo Hotels

Founders: Kadam Jeet Jain, Rahul Chaudhary, and Sidharth Gupta

Industry: Hospitality/Hotel/Internet

Estimated Valuation: $81.71 Million

Treebo Hotels are obsessed with offering affordable quality accommodation startup stories. The soothing shade of these trees has allowed many exciting discussions between fellow travelers.

They are too fond of conversation with their guests while serving them diligently in startup success stories. Treebo is the leading tech, cost-effective accommodation brand of Indian asset-light.

Fact: The name of Treebo entrepreneur stories is derived from the fig tree “Bo Tree,” which was used to illuminate Gautam Buddha.

Founders: Jiby Thomas and Pranay Chulet

Industry: Classifieds, E-Commerce, Internet, Marketplace, Rental Property

Estimated Valuation: $1.5 Billion

Quikr is online startup stories and free classifieds that help users sell, buy, rent, or discover anything across India.

Group members may come to their startup success stories and find an apartment and stay in, sell their old car, motorcycle, music device, tablet, or furniture, advertise their small entrepreneur stories, find a tuition class or take a break as a model or artist, attend a salsa party, or get an audience for a local show.

47. CureFit

Founders: Ankit Nagori and Mukesh Bansal

Industry: Apps/Fitness/Health Care/Wellness

Estimated Valuation: $575 Million

CureFit is a health and fitness startup stories that provide fitness, nutrition, and mental well-being to digital and offline experiences to make fitness fun and easy. CureFit startup success stories give training sessions a whole new meaning with a range of group training classes led by trainers.

It enjoys training, everyday food is healthy and tasteful, with yoga and meditation mental fitness accessible and without hassle for medicine and lifestyle.

Note: CureFit is a health and fitness entrepreneur stories that provide fitness, nutrition, and mental well-being to digital and offline experiences.

48. Grofers

Founders: Albinder Dhindsa and Saurabh Kumar

Industry: Delivery/ E-Commerce/ E-Commerce Platforms/Grocery/Retail

Estimated Valuation: $535.5 Million

Grofers is an online startup stories with low prices that get products across categories such as grocery, beauty and wellness, household care, baby care, and pet care delivered to your door. Grofers startup success stories supply more than 3,000 products every day at prices lower than supermarkets.

Grofers entrepreneur stories currently operate throughout India in a total of 26 cities: Agra, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi NCR, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Kanpur, Kochi, Kolkata, Lucknow, Ludhiana, Mumbai, Mysore, Nagpur, Nashik, Pune, Rajkot, Surat, Vadodara, and Visakhapatnam.

49. Xpressbees

Founders: Amitava Saha and Supam Maheshwari

Industry: Delivery Service/E-Commerce/Internet/Logistics/Supply Chain Management

Estimated Valuation: $1.35 Billion

Xpressbees is a logistics e-commerce startup stories that offer its partners reliable logistics solutions. They are the fastest growing supplier of end-to-end supply chain solutions for express logistics startup success stories in India.

The entrepreneur stories offer customers comprehensive last miles, reverse logistics, collection of payments, drop shipping, supplier management, cross-border services, compliance services, and tailored software solutions.

Fact: Xpressbees startup stories deliver 6,00,000 packages in a day.

50. Delhivery

Founders: Kapil Bharati, Mohit Tandon, Sahil Barua and Suraj Saharan

Industry: E-Commerce/Logistics/Supply Chain Management

Delhivery supply chain services startup stories providing products and services to build confidence and improve consumer lives. Many engineers have started the company, including Bhavesh Manglani, Kapil Bharati, Mohit Tandon, Sahil Barua, and Suraj Saharan.

It provides a complete suite of startup success stories such as last-mile delivery, third-party and transit warehousing, reverses logistics, payment collection, vendor-to-warehouse shipping, and more. The entrepreneur stories are backed by Times Internet Ltd, which purchased a minority interest in the firm in June last year.

51. ShareChat

Founders: Ankush Sachdeva, Bhanu Pratap Singh, Bhanu Singh and Farid Ahsan

Industry: Internet/Mobile Apps/Social Network

Estimated Valuation: $460 Million

ShareChat is a social media startup stories in India. It offers only in Indian vernacular languages content consumption and sharing startup success stories to cover over 1.17 billion Indian wireless network users. It is provided in 15 Indian languages.

ShareChat has been designed for accessible content sharing from WhatsApp entrepreneur stories. It has been designed to work on even the worst links-” Wherever WhatsApp works-and, its “users initially sent mostly text updates.

Founders: Jaydeep Barman and Kallol Banerjee

Industry: E-Commerce/Food Delivery/Food Processing

Estimated Valuation: $525 Million

Rebel Foods Services (Faasos) is a food supply startup stories that disrupt how people order and get food on the phone. They serve around 10,000 customers every day who order through their mobile app, startup success stories, and this number is growing significantly every month.

An internet connection is all you need to run our mobile app or our website. You can check out “Eat Good, Eat Exciting” in 15 cities in India and over 200 locations. “There’s a wide selection of breakfast options, Indian food boxes, Chinese, South Indians, Biryani and Rice combos, wraps, etc.

Fact: The trick throughout the operation is how Faasos entrepreneur stories work with its many brands in a single ‘cloud kitchen.’

53. Pepperfry

Founders: Ambareesh Murty and Ashish Shah

Industry: E-Commerce/Furniture/Shopping

Estimated Valuation: $300 Million

Pepperfry is an online shopping startup stories, home, and lifestyle that sells products with cash on delivery facilities. The startup success stories aim to be a one-stop shop for clients looking to spice up their houses.

Pepperfry was founded by Ambareesh Murty and Ashish Shah in 2012 and is headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. Customers can sell their used furniture and, in return, get gift cards from Pepperfry entrepreneur stories that can be redeemed for any purchase made on Pepperfry.

54. Dream11

Founders: Bhavit Sheth and Harsh Jain

Industry: Fantasy Sports/Mobile/Sports

Estimated Valuation: $2.25 Billion

Dream11 is the biggest sports game in India, with over 30 million fantasy cricket, soccer, and kabaddi players and NBA players. Dream11 offers Indian sports fans startup stories to demonstrate their knowledge of sports.

From the next matches, fans can create their real-life team, score points based on their on-the-field performance, and compete against other fans' startup success stories. Dream11 helps sports supporters to increase their participation and get closer to the sport they love as a team owner, not just an audience.

Note: You can access Dream11 entrepreneur stories via the web/mobile site or the Android and iOS apps.

55. redBus.in

Founders: Ashish Kashyap and Phanindra Sama

Industry: Public Transportation/Ticketing/Transportation

Estimated Valuation: $138 Million

RedBus is an online bus ticketing startup story with a presence in India, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Colombia, and Peru, serving more than 5 million passengers startup success stories worldwide.

It simplifies worldwide travel for men. By creativity, RedBus specializes in finding alternatives. RedBus’ pride lies in the in-house talent of compelling, smart, passionate individual entrepreneur stories from different fields of expertise.

56. Mu Sigma

Launch: 2004

Founders: Dhiraj C Rajaram

Industry: Management consulting

Estimated Valuation: $1.5 billion

Mu Sigma’s startup stories go back to 2004 when it was launched. The Indian decision sciences company primarily offers its data analytics services. Founded by a former strategy consultant at Booz Alten Hamilton & PricewaterhouseCoopers Dhiraj Rajaram in 2004, Mu is an Indian privately owned firm headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Mu Sigma is among the fastest-growing companies globally and has raised a cumulative sum of 163m in its funding over the years.

Dhiraj Rajaram’s startup stories of beginning and running Mu Sigma is amongst the most inspiring startup stories of all time. While starting, Dhiraj had no idea that he could get into entrepreneurship. One reason why he entered the entrepreneurship segment is due to his unending urge to learn.

The three factors that made Dhiraj Rajaram’s startup stories successful are:

• His unending urge to learn
• To separate the noise from signals
• The belief that innovation in business is nothing but a chance

You can visit Mu Sigma’s site here .

57. Clear Car Rental

Founders: Sachin Kate

Industry: Car Rental Services

Startup stories play a key role in helping inspire aspiring entrepreneurs by going through the hardships and challenges faced by other entrepreneurs to build a successful startup. Sachin Kate, the founder of Clear Car Rental, started his journey of hustling by selling newspapers at a young age since money was a big challenge for him.

Later, when he was in class 11th, he got a job as an office boy at a computer institute. Steadily, Sachin’s interest in computer science started increasing, and he pursued B Sc in Computers. He later worked on various website-building projects for the travel and hospitality industry.

He went on to launch the Clear Car Rental site in July 2010, when competitors like Meru Radio cab service had already settled in the market for a couple of years. Step by step, Clear Car Rental established its place in the market and offers its services across 210+ cities in India today. It has marked its place in providing unique local and outstation travel solutions to its users.

Check the Clear Car Rental site here .

Founders: Bhupinder Singh

Industry: Financial Services

Valuation : $187.5 m

InCred is an online credit provider for personal & business loans. It relies on data analytics to ease and accelerate lending and provides various financial products, including home loans, car 95 vehicle loans, education loans, and loans for SMEs. The startup stories of InCred talk about how Bhupinder Singh formed the company. Singh used to head the Corporate Finance division of Deutsche Bank before founding InCred.

The InCred platform initially received Rs 500-600 crore funding from Rajan Pai, MD & CEO at Manipal Group, and Gaurav Dalmia, Founder & Chairman at Landmark Holdings, IDFC PE, & Alpha Capital. The platform’s startup stories continued with InCred Finance’s acquiring InstaPaisa.com, a fintech platform, in 2015. Paragon Partners later invested Rs 25 crore in the company in March 2017.

Note: InCred aims to solve the credit problems of all its consumers with a focus on Consumer loans, Home loans, Education loans, and SME Lending.

Founders: Vidit Aatrey & Sanjeev Barnwal

Industry: Social e-commerce

Meesho is an Indian social e-commerce platform founded by IIT Delhi alumni Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal. The startup stories of Meesho are as unique as the concept of Meesho itself. Based in Bengaluru, Meesho enables small businesses and individuals to start their online stores via social channels like WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, etc. Autrey and Barnwal initially created FashNear and later pivoted to Meesho, a short-term meri shop, in 2015 end.

The startup stories for Meesho started when Aatrey and Barnwal met Anu, a Bengaluru housewife running her offline boutique by her name. Anu was passionate about her business and used the most readily available technique to expand her business- WhatsApp. She would buy her inventory and stock from suppliers through WhatsApp, who would send her pictures if a new collection on WhatsApp. Meesho’s startup stories adopted the entire strategy to build their platform for local businesses.

Note: Meesho already has over one crore resellers earning over Rs 25k per month by reselling on its platform.

Check Meesho’s site here .

60. ShareChat

Founders:  Ankush Sachdeva, Bhanu Pratap Singh and Farid Ahsan

Industry: Social Media

ShareChat is an Indian social media platform developed by Mohalla Tech Private Limited and founded by Ankush Sachdeva, Bhanu Pratap Singh, and Farid Ahsan. The social media platform has over 60 million monthly active users across 15 Indian languages.

While the startup stories for such platforms have a usual curve, ShareChat’s popularity increased massively in India after the ban of Chinese products and apps, including ShareChat’s biggest competitor- TikTok.

ShareChat is a regional content platform allowing Indians to use the power of the internet without going through the English language barrier. It aims at bringing local, relevant content to smartphone users across India in Indian languages, including Hindi, Telugu, Marathi, and Malayalam. The platform now has over 160 million registered users and is on its way to becoming the most preferred social media platform in India.

You can visit ShareChat here .

61. KillerLaunch

Founder: Heena Vinayak

Industry: Information Technology, Internet

Estimated Valuation:

KillerLaunch.com is a platform aimed at launching careers in top startups in India. It allows recruiters to list job/internship openings, which job-seekers can explore and use to submit their applications.

As a user, you can use their perfectly designed filters to find a job you’ve looking for accurately. You can set filters according to the salary/stipend you wish to work for.

Fact: KillerLaunch allows you to work with leading startups in India. Find a job or an internship with the startup you’ve been dreaming of!

As long as you are looking for startup jobs, KillerLaunch will never fail you. Either find or start your own, KillerLaunch has it all!

62. Wow! Momo

Founders: Sagar J. Daryani, Binod K. Homgai

Industry: Food and beverage/ Fast food restaurant

Estimated Valuation: $120 million

Wow! Momo, India’s fastest growing momo chain started by classmates Sagar and Binod, began selling steamed momos from their six by six kiosk in Springdale Spencer in 2008. The food chain started from a garage in Kolkata, India.

Wow! Momo, an Indian chain of fast-food restaurants, started with a meager investment of Rs. 30,000 INR to Rs.860 Crore INR.

The company has expanded to Kolkata, Noida, Gurgaon, Mumbai, Chennai, Lucknow, Delhi, Bengaluru, Cuttack, Puri, Kochi, Bhubaneshwar, and Kanpur. Pam-fried momos became their USP. Serving delicious momos is their agenda.

Fact: Wow! Momo offers 16 different varieties of momos for vegetarians and non-vegetarians. For vegetarians, Wow! Momo offerings include corn and cheese, among others. They offer chocolate momos as well!

63. AddressHealth

Founders: Anand Laxman, Anoop Radhakrishnan

Industry: Healthcare

Estimated Valuation: $1.5 Million

AddressHealth is India’s first one-stop-shop pediatric primary healthcare service provider. The company is a pioneer in this field. Today, the company became the largest school health provider with its School Health program. Also, they run several Child Speciality Clinics. Recently, the company completed ten years of excellent healthcare service.

However, it is conducting several projects to complete medical examinations of students from head to toe.

Fact: Grand College Canada awards AdressHealth as “The Stars in Global Health-7”.

64. Flyrobe

Founders: Shreya Mishra, Pranay Surana, Tushar Saxena

Industry: Fashion

Estimated Valuation:   $2 million

Flyrobe is an on-demand wardrobe service that lets consumers rent clothes at a fraction of the retail price. Its service includes three-hour local deliveries and pickups. Flyrobe has been endorsed by 20 Bollywood celebrities on social media, which has helped to remove the stigma of used clothing.

The startup has raised $7 million from IDG Ventures, Sequoia Capital , and several angel investors.

Fact: Flyrobe also offers a brand new men’s collection, including jackets from international; brands, suits, and tuxedos traditional kurta pajamas and sherwanis sets from the best Indian designers.

65. Jumbotail

Founders: Ashish Jhina

Industry: Marketplace and business

Estimated Valuation: $12.7 million

Jumbotail was founded in 2015 by Standford University batchmates Karthik Venkateswaran and Ashish Jhina. Jumbotail connects Kirana stores with brands and producers via its marketplace. It claims to serve 30,00 Kirana stores via its full-stack e-commerce model consisting of its B2B marketplace platform, warehouses, last-mile delivery supply chain network, and a fintech platform for payment credit solutions to Kirana store owners.

66. DocTalk

Founders: Krishna Chaitanya Aluru, Akshat Goenka, Vamsee Chamakura

Estimated Valuation: $5 million

DocTalk is a doctor-patient engagement platform. This company mainly gifts doctors to develop better relationships with their patients, which causes a better quality of care.

67. SmallCase

Founders: Vasanth Kamath, Rohan Gupta, Anugrah Shrivastava

Industry: Stocks and exchange-traded funds

Estimated Valuation: $8 million

This fast-growing business in India is bringing a simplified investing approach to the growing middle class in India. In retrospect, they are very similar to other investment companies growing fast, such as Acrons and Stash.

Fact: The Bengaluru-based startup provides users with a professionally built basket of stocks called ‘small cases,’ allowing them to invest in portfolios of broker-partner stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs)

68. InstaVans

Founders: Vinay Goyal

Industry: Transport and Vehicle

Estimated Valuation: $2 million

InstaVans model transforms the conventional model of shippers spending hours calling up various truck operators to find trucks with free capacity while truckers struggle to market their availability. By offering a model that shippers an on-demand platform for shippers and truckers alike.

Fact: Instavan’s addressable market is estimated at $15 billion, or about Rs 97,000 crore a year, with an average cost of Rs 1,800 per trip. More than two million registered small trucks transport more than 1.5 million tonnes of goods.

Founders: Prashant Tandon

Industry: Pharmacy

Estimated Valuation: $36 million

1mg is an online pharmacy network and generic medicine engine. It allows users to find information about medicines prescribed by doctors and buy them. Users can discover drugs by categories under ailments, classes, companies, and brands. Its mission is to make healthcare accessible, understandable, and affordable for a billion Indians.

Founders: Anupam Agarwal, Karan Jain

Industry: Car rental

Estimated Valuation: $23.3 million

Revv is an Indian car-rental startup that offers multiple options to meet all your self-drive needs. The company was founded in 2015 and currently operates in 11 cities in India: Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, Delhi NCR, Chandigarh , Jaipur, Vizag, Mysore, and Coimbatore.

To date, Revv has a fleet of around 1,000 vehicles and claims to have served around 300,000 users. It has its main office located in Gurgaon, India.

71. TravelTriangle

Founders: Sankalp Agarwal, Sanchit Garg, Prabhat Gupta

Industry: Travel and Tourism

Estimated Valuation: $34.9 Million

TravelTriangle is an exciting new way of buying trips online in India. One of India’s best-growing companies, TravelTriangle, promotes local travel agents and gets you the best flights from them. They have created a marketplace where travelers can interact with local travel agents. That same marketplace also empowers local travel agents to compete online with big fishes…

Fact: According to the VCCEdge report, Venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) funds invested $115.69 million across 13 deals in the travel segment in 2014. In 2013, there were nine transactions of $8.2 million.

72. BiggBang

Launch: 2020

Founder: Applancer Services Pvt Ltd

Industry: Coworking spaces and office spaces

Estimated Annual Valuation:

BiggBang provides perfect coworking spaces and office spaces for rent. The coworking space is located in three cities: Chandigarh, Mohali, and Panchkula. BiggBang has many top-level facilities, which make it one of the best coworking spaces to work!

Recently BiggBang has also launched a young startup program to provide free spaces to startups in return for a small share in their revenue.

BiggBang also provides hot-desking facilities and private office spaces.

Visit their website here.

73. Lenskart

Founder: Peyush Bansal

Industry: Opticals, eyewear retail chain

Estimated Annual Valuation: Rs. 310.9 crore

Lenskart was founded by Peyush Bansal, who launched Lenskart in 2010, and Amit Chaudhary and Sumeet Kapahi in 2010. Peyush, a former Microsoft employee, also founded Valyoo Technologies, a parent company of Lenskart.

Lenskart offers more than 5,000 styles of frames and 45 unique types of high-quality lenses. The latest eyewear trends are an homage to a group of interior designers and styles that keep tabs on the latest trends.

Founder: Naveen Tewari

Industry: Mobile Ad network

Estimated Annual Valuation: Rs. 384.21 crore

The founder and CEO of InMobi mobile advertising network giant, Naveen Tewari, has come a long way. Naveen is a trained engineer, studied at Harvard Business School, and worked for McKinsey’s information company.

Today, InMobi can strike a chord with itself and call itself a global company. Besides India, it has offices and operations in Australia, Taiwan, the US, UK, France, Italy, Russia, Germany, China, and more. Although it only launched in China in late 2011, Naveen described InMobi as “one of China’s largest advertising networks.”

75. Zerodha

Founder: Nitin Kamath

Industry: Stock brokerage company

Estimated Annual Valuation: Rs. 850 crores

The founder of Zerodha, “Nithin Kamath,” before founding Zerodha, worked at the call center at night and traded in the morning hours. At the age of 17, he was introduced to the stock market by his friend and has since started trading.

The firm did not spend money on advertising or marketing its company. They do not make ads.

They make money by charging a lump sum of Rs. Twenty futures, options, and internal trade. In contrast, some competitors charge more than this based on the percentage of sales sold. Its business model in which it operates is ‘low margin – high volume’.

76. Gradeup

Founder: Shobhit Bhatnagar, Vibhu Bhushan, and Sanjeev Kumar

Industry: The education sector

Estimated Annual Valuation: Rs. 30 crore

Split distance is a freemium platform. Anyone preparing for the competitive exams can download the app and visit the website to prepare for the appropriate exams – they can join the community – share with peers and mentors to answer their doubts, and access the preparation like previous years' papers, etc.

Additionally, some paid services on the platform such as)) Green card – Purchase Test series and b) Classroom – Live classrooms, aspirants who can add extra value to their preparation.

77. OkCredit

Launch: 2017

Founder: Aditya Prasad

Industry: Online payment merchant

Estimated Annual Valuation: Rs. 654.4 million

OkCredit is a solution based on small business owners and their customers to record credit/payment transactions nationwide. Using a computer, OkCredit reduces the merchant’s burden of keeping and counting paper accounts. It also allows them to send group notifications to customers during delays or missed payments.

78. NinjaCart

Founder: Thirukumaran Nagarajan, Vasudevan Chinnathambi, Kartheeswaran KK, Ashutosh Vikram

Industry: Fresh farm supply chain

Estimated Annual Valuation: Rs. 66.27 crore

Ninjacart was discovered in 2015 as a B2C hyperlocal food delivery organization. Their main goal is to help retailers take their items online and deliver quality food to consumers less than 60 minutes from ordering scales. This was still a novel concept back then.

Initially, about 7,000 farmers were on its platform, but on average, 2,000 transactions every month. The production arrives daily between 4.00 pm and 6.00 pm, with some farmers traveling up to 400 km to make the drop.

79. Bewakoof.com

Founder: Prabhkiran Singh

Industry: Ecommerce clothing

Estimated Annual Valuation: Rs. 400 crore

Bewakoof is a fashion brand that lives to create creative and high-quality clothing for a fashionable, modern Indian. Bewakoof was introduced to the goal of creating impact by innovation, honesty, and thinking.

Bewakoof.com started with an investment of Rs 30,000 and received a seed subsidy after six months of work.

80. GoaBrewing Co.

Founder: Suraj Shenai

Industry: Brewery, beverages

Estimated Annual Valuation: Rs. 125 crore

From choosing the most sophisticated styles to presenting them to the entire quirkier packaging, they had my heart from the moment I set my eyes on the Eight Finger Eddie IPA. Pineapple Saison follows next, and to me, these two are bees made with great skill. Sensitivity is only available in Goa at the moment. The good – is there is no need to finish the beach kings on the beach.

81. BulkMRO

Founders: Devang Shah, Gaurang Shah

Estimated Valuation: $12.7mn/year

Bulk MRO is a Mumbai-based startup that provides a one-stop-shop industrial product solution to the marketplace. This business has a B2B model. Launched in 2015, it has already raised revenue of 25 crores from seed funding.

Devang claims that Bulk MRO acts as a ‘big seller’ to large corporate customers and controls the entire MRO pool or indirect retailers through their platform. It eliminates several customer inefficiencies, including decreased order durability, GST compliance, and malfunction.

Founders: Naveen Tewari

Industry: AI

Glance, a major marketing component of InMobi Group, uses AI to provide personal information to its users. The service replaces the blank screen with relevant local news, news, and unusual games. Late last year, InMobi acquired Roposo, a Gurgaon startup, which enabled it to launch short-form videos on the platform. Google also invests in Roposo.

It has 33 million active users working every month. The users can spend about 20 minutes consuming content in many forms in more than ten languages ​​in the app daily.

Founders: Vijay Arisetty

Industry: Mobile application

Estimated Valuation: $170 million

MyGate has allowed users to opt out of data-sharing agreements with applications such as Swiggy and Dunzo with the “pre-approval” of delivery staff. The app no ​​longer authorizes visitors to bring their cell phone numbers to the gate if they are permitted to enter.

MyGate has voluntarily implemented the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) standards, considered the most comprehensive data privacy laws. Compliance with the GDPR is not required for companies operating within India.

Founders: Amit Gupta

Industry: E-vehicles

Estimated Valuation: $14million

Yulu was founded to tackle traffic congestion and its product – the air pollution it causes. “One-third of the air pollution in the city is caused by cars. In Yulu, our aim is not only to reduce traffic congestion but also to do something about road pollution,” said Amit Gupta, Co-Founder and CEO of Yulu Bicycles.

85. CleverTap

Founders: Suresh Kondamudi

Estimated Valuation: $35million

CleverTap has served over 8,000 customers globally. It helps the websites to grow and maintain their users for a lifetime by several. Engaging and retention programs are offered by various means.

Many renowned companies like Vodafone, Star, Sony, Domino’s Pizza, Gojek, Cleartrip, and BookMyShow have been known to use CleverTap to engage and retain customers on several sites. The startup has opened its headquarters in Singapore and planning to expand further.

Founders: Akshay Joshi

Industry: Environmental Intelligence

Estimated Valuation: $6 billion

Ambee is an Indian-based startup that provides real-time environmental status regarding the weather, humidity, temperature, UV, and all such parameters. It provides all such information to the businesses that work depending on weather parameters like the agricultural sector.

According to WHO, there should be a weather sensor every square kilometer to measure the weather accurately, but that can’t be seen in India. Hence the company has come up to help such startups by providing open data sources.

87. Doubtnut

Founders: Aditya Shankar

Industry: Educational app

Estimated Valuation: $ 50 million

Doubnut is an online platform to help students with their academic doubts and classes. Students facing any problem while solving any question have .to upload the photograph of their problem simply, and they will get the answer to their doubts within 10 seconds with a full video explanation.

88. Skillsmatic

Founders: Dhvanil Sheth

Estimated Valuation: Rs. 60 crore

Skillsmatic develops new educational products to build basic skills in young children aged 3 to 9 through fun learning techniques. The firm delivers products such as writing and erasing work mats, educational games, and STEM toys. Their main aim is to help the kids learn and apply key concepts throughout the play. It is one of the 17th launches from Surge’s first team.

Founders: Krishna Kumar

Industry: Agribusiness

CropIn has merged the agriculture sector with technology and generates AI-based data to provide SaaS solutions to various Agri-business worldwide.

Using the latest AI, Machine Learning, and Satellite Imaging, CropIn creates a network of all these stakeholders, empowering clients such as banks, insurance companies, government, development agencies, agricultural companies, agricultural enterprises, farm machinery companies, food processors, and vendors to analyze and interpret data to get real-time insights on static plants.

90. Avaada Energy

Founders: Vineet Mittal

Industry: Energy production

Estimated Valuation: USD 15 million

Avaada Energy is a startup with an independent energy producer (IPP) for renewable energy projects. It is a Mumbai-based firm and a green energy company that promotes sustainable energy through its use and open access solutions in the solar, wind, roof, and hybrid markets. The company works with various businesses, supporting them in realizing business objectives through environmental sustainability programs and social commitments, producing beneficial results.

Founders: Sachin Bhatia

Industry: Shopping Network

BulBul is an online shopping app, and customers can use the video feature for shopping purposes. It is based in Gurugram and has a motive to make online shopping convenient and social-friendly by helping the customers make shopping easy.

The customers don’t have to read the product description and can simply see the video of it in several languages. It serves to help the women of the country with easy and convenient shopping.

92. Skyroot Aerospace

Founders: Pawan Kumar Chandana

Industry: Aeronautics

Estimated Valuation: $15 million

Skyroot aerospace is an India-based startup that has successfully launched its missile in the sky. It has now become the first private company to build an indigenous rocket engine on its own!

The Hyderabad-based startup aims to make India independent by building homemade missiles. It was founded by two former ISRO scientists, Pawan Kumar Chandana and Naga Bharath Daka. It also builds small satellite launch vehicles.

93. Hansel.io

Founders: Varun Ramamurthy Dinakar

Industry: Deep tech

Estimated Valuation: $5.4million

Hansel.io is a B2B startup that helps resolve issue like app hanging without updating the app. It provides a convenient speed for an app to work to have a seamlessly fast experience.

The developers can fix any crash using various advanced tools like hotfix and diagnosis from a single point.

94. Streak AI

Founders: Harsha M

Estimated Valuation: $1.3 million

Now traders can create algorithms with Streak AI to generate trading signals without coding! Streak AI has claimed to be one of the few sites worldwide where users can generate unique algorithms to create trading signals. Hence buying and selling stocks have become easy with Streak AI!

95. Terraview

Founders: Prateek M Srivastava

Industry: Image processing

Estimated Valuation: $815,000

A SaaS-based startup, Terraview helps by providing drones and AI-based image-building solutions that help maintain vineyards across the country.

Terraview’s advanced tools help farmers to detect and analyze areas of canopy cover, soil hydration, weather prognosis, pruning, and detection of bacteria and fungus, and pest infestations, which can’t be done normally without such tools.

Founders: Nikhil Tripathi

Industry: B2B agriculture

Estimated Valuation: $200billion

Bijak is a B2B agribusiness platform that offers buyers and sellers better prices, more operating costs, and better performance. The Gurgaon-based company ensures immediate loan disbursement, reduces costs, eliminates waste of resources and a convenient payment channel, and operates as a bookkeeping app.

Bijak aims to bring accountability and transparency to agricultural prices through a buyer/seller rating system based on real-time transaction data. Speaker users can use those standards to identify and trade with trusted partners.

Founders: Heshan Fernando

Estimated Valuation: Not disclosed.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone has been stuck in their homes. This has made hospital consultations for people a bit difficult as people are hesitant to visit hospitals due to fear of catching the virus. oDoc is a new telemedicine app that conveniently helps people consult a doctor over audio, video, or texts in their homes’ safe environment.

Download the oDoc app and consult the doctor about your health problems.

98. Epigamia

Founders: Rohan Mirchandani

Industry: Food; Greek-yogurt

Estimated Valuation: INR 110 Crore

Who doesn’t loves yogurt? Epigamia was launched in 2008, and since then, the startup has acted as a game-changer for the industry. The firm has launched yogurt in many flavors and variants, ensuring everyone falls in love with it!

The Mumbai-based firm has also been endorsed by popular celebrities like Deepika Padukone and has generated many funds in several rounds.

99. Nemocare

Founders: Pratyusha Pareddy

Estimated Valuation: $1 million

NemoCare is a startup with the main motive to prevent infant and maternal mortality due to various underlying conditions. From a planned blueprint, device, and performance, NemoCare smart baby monitor has embedded technology in its pocket and is supported by a team of user experience and designers of a user interface (UX / UI), software developers, and embedded engineers.

This device also provides comfort in the form of haptic vibrations in a child’s foot, as a first step towards controlling stress when an apneic episode is detected, assisting physicians in emergency emergencies.

Founders: Srinivas (Vasu) Sriramdas

Industry: Online training

Estimated Valuation: $4billion

Edyst helps college students and working professionals by providing them training via online video classes. The site currently has two popular and high-demand courses that ensure selection in MNCs like TCS and Infosys.

The other courses aim to help the student for companies like Amazon and Uber that can help them make at least $126 million a month.

FAQs – Frequently Asked Questions about Startup Success Stories

1. do you need to study business to have startup success stories.

No, you do not need to study business as a subject to build a successful startup. However, that doesn’t mean you can start a business without any knowledge of the market. While starting a startup, it is imperative to study the market trends to build strong startup success stories .

2. Is starting a YouTube channel a startup?

If this question had been asked ten years ago, some would have laughed. But today, with advancing technology and digitalization, many individuals are starting YouTube channels with the only aim of earning money. Yes, a YouTube channel can be considered as a startup, especially one started by internet entrepreneurs. YouTube channels with successful startup stories are usually the ones that function as a whole company and produce content for their YouTube channel .

3. Are their startup success stories about YouTube channels?

Many YouTubers have contributed to building a strong digital community in our countries. Their YouTube channels are startup success stories for many and have been able to accumulate a following of millions.

Some of the startup success stories of YouTube channels are of:

• BB Ki Vines
• Sandeep Maheshwari
• Technical Guruji
• Mostly Sane
• Flying Beast
• Mumbiker Nikhil

4. How does yourstory contribute to making your startup stories?

Successful startup stories are not made in a day. They are yourstory of the highs and lows you faced in your entrepreneurial journey that make startup success stories. These are the startup success stories of inspiring entrepreneurs who paved the way of innovation and dreams to build an empire.

Startups are taking over the world with their innovation and improved convenience, and these 12 Indian startups have succeeded in the cut-throat competition in the market amongst different brands. The greatest lesson from these startup success stories is to have the strong willpower to give up.

BurgerGPT: Redefining the Burger Experience in India with Founder Pavas Ahuja

Sharechat: india's own social media giant - a comprehensive walkthrough, prescription for disruption: practo's controversial encounter with india's healthcare sector, charging up a revolution: ather energy - the indian startup that's electrifying the two-wheeler industry, us military advances ai assistant for special operations, google faces pressure to combat nonconsensual images, apple intelligence vs. android’s hybrid ai, hebbia raises nearly $100m series b for ai-powered document search.

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Social entrepreneurship in India: how these frameworks and case studies power a new wave of change

With a blend of idealism and pragmatism, social entrepreneurs are bringing about broad transformation in india, as explained in this insightful new book..

Thursday March 19, 2020 , 7 min Read

The rise of the social innovation movement in India, along with profiles and roadmaps, is well documented in the book, Social Entrepreneurship in India: Quarter Idealism and a Pound of Pragmatism, by Madhukar Shukla.

The nine chapters in the 256-page book are thoroughly researched, and draw on 120 organisational examples and 180 references. The book is a must-read for aspiring social entrepreneurs, innovators, academics, policymakers, and impact investors.

Madhukar Shukla is Professor of Strategic Management at XLRI Jamshedpur, and serves on the Board of School of Management and Labour Studies, TISS. He was the coordinator of the National Conference on Social Entrepreneurship. He holds a master’s degree in psychology from Lucknow University and a PhD from IIT-Kanpur.

Here are my seven key clusters of takeaways from the book, summarised in Table 1 (below). See also my reviews of the related books Lean Impact, The Next Billion Users, The Hybrid Domain, A Beautiful Constraint, A World of Three Zeroes, Do Good, Scaling Up, Grassroots Innovation, and The Prosperity Paradox.

1. Evolution

Citizens have the ability and creativity to change the world, Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus writes in the foreword. He describes the examples in the book as insightful and inspiring.

The book charts early examples of social entrepreneurship in India, such as Amul, SEWA, Lijjat, and Sulabh Service. More recent milestones are listed from 2001 (Aavishkar, Acumen Fund investment), 2002 (Lok Capital), 2003 (Marico Innovation Foundation), 2004 (IIM Bangalore course), 2005 (Khemka awards), 2006 (RTBI), 2007 (UnLtd India, CIIE, Deshpande Foundation), 2008 (Jagriti Yatra), 2009 (Villgro Unconvention, Sankalp Forum), and 2010 (CSIE).

Three platforms focusing on entrepreneurship in India were launched in 2009: Think Change India,  YourStory Media  , and  The Better India  . Over the years, momentum has also picked up via incubators, accelerators, conferences, and awards for social entrepreneurs.

2. Definitions

Though not all practitioners and academics agree on the precise definition of “social entrepreneurship”, there seems general agreement that it involves a primary social mission, development of innovative solutions, and entrepreneurial strategies.

Social entrepreneurs bring about transformative changes in society and economy by filling gaps and addressing unmet needs. They improve productivity and create value and wealth, Madhukar explains.

Social enterprises are focused on social and environmental impact in addition to financial gains. Wealth generation is for becoming self-sufficient and benefiting target communities, and not for profit maximisation. The target communities are underserved, neglected, or disadvantaged, and are not high-income consumers (who are the focus of mainstream businesses).

Types of innovations deployed include new products/services (eg. Bhungroo water harvesting technique), new methods of production (eg. Saral Designs’ sanitary pads), new markets (eg. Grameen Bank microfinance for the poor), new inputs (eg. Husk Power biomass electricity), or new organisational forms (eg. Amul member-ownership).

One chapter describes the entrepreneurial mindset via the effectuation framework; it was formulated by Prof. Saras Saraswathy of University of Virginia’s Darden School (see my earlier article and interview ). It is based on six principles, aptly defined as Bird in Hand, Affordable Loss, Crazy-Quilt, Lemonade, and Pilot in the Plane.

Effectual thinking is very different from causal thinking. It relies on imagination, spontaneity, exploration, experimentation, learning from failures, and working in a context of uncertainty. In contrast, causal thinking is better suited to mature industries, and is based on planning, market research, prediction, clearly-defined opportunity, and increasing efficiency.

For example, Association for India’s Development (AID) started off with supporting one village school, and then scaled up to a hundred projects. SELCO began by installing one solar system at a time, and then scaled up once the technology found acceptance.

Ela Bhatt first immersed in the informal work of textile labourers’ wives, and then began documenting their lives and collectivising them. This ultimately led to the formal registration of SEWA, which is now India’s largest trade union of unorganised sector women.

Many large social enterprises of today had humble beginnings, such as CRY (six friends pooling in Rs 50 each to help underprivileged children) and Goonj (a couple donating their unutilised clothes after three years of marriage). Boond is another example of a social enterprise that grew through experimenting, learning and refining goals; the strategy emerged over time.

4. Entrepreneur and organisational types

The author explains that social entrepreneurs differ in their focus, resources, approaches, and organisational structure created. They can be classified into local changemakers (eg. Sebayan, Protsahan), public goods providers (eg. GreenSole, ToyBank, Pratham, Akshaya Patra Foundation), constructive opportunists (eg. Help Us Green, I Say Organic), social transformers (eg. RTI movement), and ecosystem builders (eg. Villgro).

In terms of formal structure, such organisations fall into the following categories: NGOs (eg. CRY, ChildLine, Goonj, Helpage), revenue-generating social ventures (eg. Pratham, Milaap), hybrid ventures (eg. non-profit Mother Earth and for-profit Industree Crafts), and social enterprises (eg. Vaatsalya Hospitals).

Corporates may also cultivate a sense of social responsibility through CSR initiatives. In India, the legal entity options for social ventures include public charitable trust, registered society, cooperative society, producers’ company, NBFC, and LLP.

5. Business models

The author cautions that the target communities of social enterprises often face challenges of physical infrastructure, social barriers, cultural prejudices, skill gaps, weak market linkages, inadequate health and education, low asset management capacity, and impaired decision-making confidence.

Poverty is not just about lack of income; it also has social, psychological, emotional and experiential dimensions. There are multiple layers and manifestations of poverty, which include powerlessness, humiliation, rejection, discrimination, exclusion, insecurity, vulnerability, anxiety, and depression.

Serving such markets calls for entrepreneurial models that bring about affordability, awareness, customisation, contexualisation, and behavourial change, the author explains. It is not just financial aid that matters, but productive assets, mentorship, peer linkages, and inculcation of financial habits like saving.

A range of business models have been designed and deployed in this regard. Examples are cross-subsidisation (Aravind Eye Care), financed purchase (SELCO, Rickshaw Bank), micro-finance (RangDe, MicroGraam), pay-per-use (Sulabh Shauchalay, Sarvajal ATMs), and no-frills offering (Janta Meals, LifeSpring Hospitals).

Other entrepreneurial models described are para-skilling (Bank Mitra, wPower), shared channels (India Post, Frontier Markets), aggregated market linkage (eChoupal, GoCoop, Ethicus), supply-demand matching (BookMyBai, BabaJobs), and skilling (DesiCrew, Rural Shores, Youth4Jobs).

6. Sustainability

Sustainability and replicability can be a challenge due to the complex, multi-layered linkages that need to be addressed, the author cautions. This calls for a sound understanding of ground realities and ability to bring on new partners.

For example, SELCO brought on board finance companies to make solar lighting systems affordable. Hasiru Dala formed a collective of waste pickers and also got contracts from apartment houses and public events, thus transforming them into entrepreneurs.

BASIX began by providing low-interest credit to the poor, and then offered livelihood support for agriculture and livestock. Such examples highlight the importance of learning and willingness to change, the author emphasises.

Standardisation and certification have been effectively used in the carpet industry by RugMark (GoodWeave International) to verify that child labour has not been used. Technology also plays an important role in sustainability, as shown by Digital Green’s extensive video library of agricultural practices.

The author charts four approaches to scaling social enterprises: scaling up (new markets and products), scaling out (franchisees, partnerships), scaling deep (within the same community), and scaling vertically (national policies and laws).

For example, Milk Mantra expanded into new states and launched new products as well (eg. cheese). Agastya International Foundation has developed Science Centres, Mobile Labs, and Labs-on-Bike in a number of states.

Afforest has partnered with a number of local organisations and municipalities to replicate its forest regeneration model. SELCO’s incubation centre nurtures social ventures in other regions.

Mann Deshi Foundation began by offering affordable amenities in Maharashtra villages, and then deepened the engagement to asset creation via credit cooperatives and a rural bank. A community radio station and entrepreneurship programme were also launched. Drishtee started with rural e-kiosks, and then launched a rural supply chain.

The National Association of Street Vendors of India mobilised a movement for the Street Vendors Act. Steps in the journey included multi-stakeholder meetings, commissioned research studies, and even Street Food Festivals.

In sum, the book shows that though India may be criticised for lack of technology or product innovation, there is plenty of momentum and excellence in social innovation. But given the scale of disparity despite economic growth, there is much more room for entrepreneurship via social processes, mechanisms, and structures.

(Edited by Teja Lele Desai)

• social entrepreneurship
• startup advice
• innovations
• Madhukar Shukla

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A Systems View Across Time and Space

• Open access
• Published: 22 April 2015

User innovation and entrepreneurship: case studies from rural India

• Vanita Yadav 1 &
• Preeti Goyal 2  

Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship volume  4 , Article number:  5 ( 2015 ) Cite this article

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Innovation research has abundant literature on technologically advanced innovations and entrepreneurship. However, literature from a rural innovator and entrepreneur perspective is sparse. Therefore, we explore rural user innovation and entrepreneurship in a developing country, India. Using multiple case study research method, we study cases of five rural user innovations in detail. These rural innovators innovated to alleviate the drudgery of their lives and to fulfill their need for a low-cost local solution to a widespread rural problem. They often face a resource void for commercializing their innovations and we find that external actors can play an enabling role in filling this void. The findings of our study help propose a framework for enabling rural innovation and entrepreneurship in developing countries like India. Further, in addition to poverty alleviation, we found that there was a positive social impact on the lives of rural entrepreneurs and their community.

User innovation and entrepreneurship is an important phenomenon, which competes with and may displace producer innovation in many areas (Baldwin and Von Hippel 2011 ). There is a growing interest in this field and we know very little about its applicability in the developing economies.

Research on user innovation and entrepreneurship to date has focused almost entirely on developed economy settings (Enos 1962 ; Knight 1963 ; Freeman 1968 ; von Hippel 1988 , 2005 ; Shah and Tripas 2007 ). The phenomenon is understudied from the developing economy's perspective. Gupta ( 2006 ) reports numerous examples of rural innovations occurring in India. However, his study does not examine these rural innovations from the user innovation perspective.

Bruton et al. ( 2008 ) suggest that there is a need to examine the applicability of existing innovation and entrepreneurship theories in a developing economy context to advance our theoretical understanding of this field. This context is quite different from that pertaining in developed economies. For example, institutional arrangements supporting markets are either absent or weak in developing economies resulting in institutional voids (Mair and Marti 2009 ). This is impedes entrepreneurial activities in developing countries like Bangladesh (Mair et al. 2012 ) and India (Khanna and Palepu 2010 ).

In this paper we address this gap in the literature by examining rural innovation and entrepreneurship in India using the user innovation theoretical lens. Specifically, we ask the following research questions: (1) Why do rural users innovate? (2) How do they innovate? (3) How do they commercialize their products to become user entrepreneurs? (4) What is its impact on the individual rural user entrepreneur? (5) What is the impact of rural user entrepreneurship on the society or local community?

The paper proceeds as follows: First, we present a theoretical overview of user innovation theory and highlight the gap in literature. Next, we discuss the findings from our case studies and present a cross-case analysis. Then, we summarize our findings and discuss the implications of our study.

Theoretical overview

User innovation theory.

von Hippel's ( 1988 ) work on sources of innovation reveals that users (both individuals and user firms) have developed some of the most important products and processes for their own use. He defines user innovators as a firm or individual that creates an innovation to use it. Examples of user innovation can include a surgeon inventing a new medical device for his/her use or a sports enthusiast creating new sports equipment for his/her own use.

Studies in many fields have documented the importance of user innovation. For example, in oil refining, user firms developed nearly all of the important innovations (Enos 1962 ). Users developed nearly 80% of the important scientific instruments (von Hippel 1976 ). Users also developed majority of the major innovations in semiconductor processing (von Hippel 1988 ) and in sports equipment (Hienerth 2006 ). In British firms, considerable fractions of inventions were for in-house usage (Pavitt 1984 ). Literature on user innovation reports empirical evidences from various countries like USA, UK, Canada, and Netherlands. Empirical studies reveal that users ranging from 6% to 40% develop and modify products (Baldwin and Von Hippel 2011 ). All this highlights the fact that users are developers of a significant number of innovations that exist in the world today. Baldwin and von Hippel ( 2011 ) argue that we are now witnessing a paradigm shift from the traditional producer innovation model to a user and open collaborative innovation model. von Hippel ( 1986 ) also suggests that needs of user innovators can be idiosyncratic or can reflect the needs of a larger population.

User entrepreneurship

We define user entrepreneurs as firms or individuals that initially create an innovation for their own use and then later commercialize the innovation for sale in the marketplace. The conventional understanding of entrepreneurship suggests that recognition of a commercial marketplace opportunity precedes prototype development (Venkataraman 1997 ). In contrast, the emerging literature on user innovation and entrepreneurship suggests that the process can be reverse. That is, user entrepreneurs first develop prototypes and subsequently recognize the commercialization potential of their product or service (Shah and Tripsas 2007 ; Haefliger et al. 2010 ). User innovators develop this insight into commercial potential by using and gaining experience with the product or service they have developed for their own use (Haefliger et al. 2010 ).

Shah and Tripsas ( 2007 ) pp. 124 define user entrepreneurship as ‘the commercialization of a new product or service by an individual or group of individuals who are also users of that product or service.’ They further classify user entrepreneurs as professional-user entrepreneurs and end-user entrepreneurs. Professional-user entrepreneurs are those individuals who use a product/service in their professional lives while remaining embedded in the organization. And end-user entrepreneurs are those individuals who use a product/service in their daily life and then commercialize it. Professional-user entrepreneurs have been studied in the ice-harvesting industry (Utterback 1994 ) and in probe microscopy (Mody 2006 ). End-user entrepreneurs have been studied in rodeo kayaking (Baldwin et al. 2006 ), mountain bicycle (Luthje et al. 2005 ), and automobile industries (Franz 2005 ), among others.

Research also highlights that user entrepreneurs are different from other entrepreneurs due to their direct experience with the need and prototype solutions. Although the importance of users as sources of innovations is well established in the existing literature on innovation studies (von Hippel 2005 ), the importance of users as a source of entrepreneurial activity is a relatively understudied area (Shah and Tripsas 2007 ). Shah and Tripsas ( 2007 ) argue that even though users innovate, commercialization of their innovations will be rare. Using the case of juvenile products, they suggest that users are most likely to be ‘accidental entrepreneurs’ and that accidental community interactions play a key role in their entrepreneurial pursuit.

User entrepreneurs derive benefits from the feedback and contributions through a collective social process. Using the example of firms founded by users of video games, Haefliger et al. ( 2010 ) suggest that user entrepreneurs derive their designs from existing products or technologies. Using the case history of rodeo kayaking, Baldwin et al. ( 2006 ) discuss how the level of entrepreneurial activity changes with changing economics of manufacturing. This is because subsequent user innovations and investment in production technology changes the nature of products and its demand.

At the macro level, Saemundsson and von Hippel ( 2010 ) study the level of user entrepreneurship in a country and how user entrepreneurs differ from other entrepreneurs in their attitudes and aspirations. Chandra and Coviello ( 2010 ) present a four-part typology of ‘consumers as international entrepreneurs.’ Shah et al. ( 2006 ) posit that the likelihood of users engaging in entrepreneurship is highest during the early phases of an industry lifecycle and declines rapidly over time. Furthermore, Shah and Tripsas ( 2007 ) posit that user entrepreneurship is likely to exist in industries where usage of the product or service provides enjoyment as opposed to pure economic benefits.

Paucity of user innovation and entrepreneurship literature from India

The existing literature on user entrepreneurs employs case studies from sports (Baldwin et al. 2006 ), specialized technology (Haefliger et al. 2010 ), and juvenile products (Shah and Tripsas 2007 ) - all examples of innovations from developed economies. There is a paucity of literature from developing economies. We carried out an extensive search in the online available databases like Proquest, EBSCO, JSTOR, and Google scholar to look for studies from rural areas in developing countries. To search, we used combinations of keywords like ‘user innovation + rural/grassroots/developing country/developing economy/India,’ ‘user entrepreneurship + rural/grassroots/developing country/developing economy/India’ and searched for words in title or author supplied keywords or abstract. The search results either displayed no papers or put forward a few papers that were not relevant for our search criterion. To decide on relevance, we read the abstracts of these papers and then dropped those papers that were not studies of Indian user innovation or user entrepreneurship. As a result, our search yielded no papers on user innovation or user entrepreneurship from India. Our search was restricted to papers published in journals and we did not search working and conference papers. Thus, our study is an important stepping stone to theory building from a developing country perspective in the area of user innovation and entrepreneurship.

Results and discussion

We began our research by looking for evidence of user innovation and user entrepreneurship occurring in rural India. We focused primarily on rural India because 70% of the Indian population lives in rural areas (PTI Press Trust of India 2011 ). The next step was to understand the phenomenon in detail and examine the unique manifestations of 150 user innovation theory in the Indian context. This could be feasible only through qualitative research design, and case study emerged as the logical research method. This section discusses the findings from our case studies. We first provide a brief description of the individual cases (see Table 1 for comparative descriptions). Then, we discuss the cross-case analysis in the light of our research questions.

Brief case summaries

Innovation case 1: cotton stripper.

In India, the traditional process of separating cotton lint from its shell is manual and involves separating by hand the firmly attached lint from the inner side of the cotton shell. Mansukhbhai Patel, a farmer, says that mainly women and children are employed to do this. In this process, cotton dust is emitted in the air, which is a serious health hazard. It has been found that workers exposed to an environment laden with cotton dust can become patients of byssinosis, a lung disease (Kumar 2008 ). Patel well understood the pain of the manual process as he was employed for cotton stripping in his childhood days.

I have seen the manual and tedious work. It was time consuming, it would take months and the rains would come and there would be huge losses for the farmers… Women and children had to do this backbreaking work and school going children were also employed in this job. I was also allocated this task. Studying or going to school was last priority. Father - mother said, ‘this much work has to be done and then study or go to school’. - Patel (translated from personal interviews)

Since then, he felt that he should do something to alleviate this drudgery. He dropped from school after 9th grade due to poverty and continued to work in his cotton field. He also did many odd jobs and picked up mechanical skills by working as an electrician and mechanic in cotton mills. In 1991 to 1992, he developed a machine that could mechanically strip cotton from its shell by borrowing money from his family and friends. He tested the machine in his farm and built many prototypes before it operated as per his satisfaction. Patel finally achieved a workable commercial solution with the seventh prototype and GIAN helped in mobilizing the technical support from premier education institutions like National Institute of Design (NID) and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). He also obtained intellectual property rights protection for his product in India and in the USA with the help of NIF. Patel now owns five small firms with a turnover of over US$ 0.3 million.

Innovation case 2: mitticool (innovative clay products)

Clay pottery was the traditional business of Mansukhbhai Prajapati's family living in a small village in rural India. Prajapati failed in 10th grade and dropped out of school. Due to meager financial returns, Prajapati gave up pottery. He ended up earning his livelihood by doing odd jobs at various places like running a small tea stall or working in a factory for 4 years. While working for a brick roof tiles factory, he was inspired to build a machine to make clay products with high efficiency. So, he returned back to his family occupation - pottery. The clay used for this is somewhat different than the clay used for hand pottery and it took him some time to master this clay composition. He began by making earthen clay pots and hot plates in 1988. Most people in rural India use clay pots to store drinking water and hot plates or tawa for cooking flat wheat bread. In rural areas, the earthen pots are a natural way of keeping drinking water cool in summers. In January 2001, an earthquake registering 7.9 on the Richter scale devastated the Indian state of Gujarat and all earthen pots of Prajapati were broken.

A photographer took pictures of my broken clay pots and published in the newspaper with a headline ‘Garib Ka Fridge Tut Gaya’ (Refrigerator of the Poor has Broken). I thought; he is calling my pot a fridge. We also want a fridge but do not have money to purchase one… so…why don’t I make a clay fridge for myself… and I started experimenting with clay to make a clay refrigerator that did not need electricity to cool. In 2005, my wife wanted a nonstick pan for cooking and when I went to the market to buy one, I saw the cost was INR 450 (US$8). It was very expensive for me and I thought- can’t I do something to my clay hotplates to make them nonstick. I worked on it for 1.5 years… - Prajapati (translated from personal interviews)

Prajapati created many innovative clay products like the Mitticool clay refrigerator, the nonstick clay tawa (hot plate) and the clay pressure cooker. The name of the refrigerator ‘Mitticool’ comes from the Hindi word mitti , which in means ‘clay.’ The clay refrigerator can be used to store cold water, food, fruits, and vegetables without any electricity or any artificial form of energy. It works on the simple principal of cooling by evaporation. Water from the upper chambers drips down the sides and evaporates, which leaves the inner chamber cool. It can be good alternative for people living in rural areas where electricity is not available or for those who are poor and cannot afford the conventional refrigerator. Financially, Prajapati has been able to move out of poverty and he received 25 awards including one from the President of India.

Innovation case 3: Bullet Santi (motorcycle-driven ploughing machine)

In 1994, the region of Amreli in the western part of India faced severe drought. The cost of manual labor was high and tilling the dry farmland became difficult. There was also shortage of cattle fodder and Mansukhbhai Jagani could no longer afford to use his cattle for tilling his farm. These difficult conditions compelled Jagani to sell his bullocks and his farming suffered. He started thinking of ways by which he could come out of this misery.

With no money and bullocks, I had no choice but to think of an alternative way to plough our 20 bighas of land. I got this idea of developing a ‘Bullet Santi’ from ‘Chhakdas’, the common mode of three-wheeler transport in Saurashtra. - Jagani (translated from personal interview)

Jagani had also worked as a farm mechanic repairing diesel engines and farming equipment. He borrowed his friend's Royal Enfield Bullet motorcycle and tried attaching a tiller to it. He created attachments using cheap and used components from foundries. The idea seemed to work and he further experimented with different ploughing attachments that could be fixed behind the motorcycle for farming. Jagani replaced the rear wheel with a set two smaller wheels and attached a metal plough behind the bike. He began using it for ploughing in his farm. It eliminated the need of bullocks or laborers for ploughing and Jagani named it ‘Bullet Santi,’ where Santi means ‘plough.’ The motorcycle had a 5.5 horsepower diesel engine and with the attachments it could be used as a multipurpose machine for ploughing, sowing, interculturing, spraying insecticides, or a small goods carrier. Other farmers also saw value in his invention and started approaching him for similar solutions.

The machine worked as a faster alternative to the traditional farming method that uses bullocks and as a cheaper alternative to modern farming methods that use tractors. In 1994, Jagani had developed the first prototype. Subsequently, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Lab in India helped Jagani improve the product design, and NIF and GIAN helped in its commercialization. His product got a patent in India and in the USA. Jagani has been able to move out of poverty and also received national level awards by NIF.

Innovation case 4: biomass gasifier

While other children went to school, Rai Singh Dahiya worked and helped his parents in their farm in rural India. He would weed and water the plants, look after the cattle, and do other jobs. They lived in a temporary or kutcha house made of mud and clay. Water would often come inside the house during rains and having a good meal was a luxury. Even though he could not attend school due to poverty, he had a keen desire to learn and was a regular listener of BBC radio for Science called Gyan - Vigyan . Dahiya had an inquisitive mind and he would often experiment with things. He would dismantle and again assemble anything that he could lay his hands on, for example, watches, clocks, radio, or farm machinery. He would often make models with mud and felt that he understood the language of machines.

In 1982, he started a brick kiln in which bricks are baked by burning the agriculture waste. He noticed that burning of biowaste in the kiln was producing gas. He thought whether he could store this gas and explore what it could be used for. Later in 1991, he opened a small workshop to repair tractors and farm equipment because he found machines fascinating and enjoyed identifying and solving problems. During that time, the fuel prices were going up and Dahiya felt that he must find some cheaper alternative to fuel.

LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) was becoming expensive, diesel was becoming expensive. I thought let me try to use the gas produced in my kiln to run the engine… this gas can also replace our cooking fuel and can be very cheap. - Dahiya (translated from personal interviews)

Dahiya thought about making an engine that could run on gas from farm waste or even cow dung. He made product designs using bricks and contemplated how he could make them using iron, other metal and old diesel engines. After years of experimenting, in 2001, he succeeded in running a diesel engine on biofuel by converting biomass into producer gas.

I faced lot of problems in the process. The engine would run for some time and then would stop. I had to open it, clean it, and then run again. I had no idea about filtration then… I thought about it and worked on it… Finally, in 2002, I made a fan filter and the engine ran successfully. - Dahiya (translated from personal interviews)

The unit consisted of a gasifier, which was conical in shape surrounded by a water jacket. The gasifier generated producer gas from biowaste and Dahiya used it to run diesel engines. Dahiya did not even know what to call his invention. In 2001, NIF scouted him and provided commercialization support. He has sold over 80 units of varied capacity and the latest version of the biomass gasifier is made of steel. It has the capacity to produce 1 kilowatt power to run an engine for 1 h from 1 kg of biowaste.

Dahiya has come a long way from extreme poverty to now owning property, which is a three-story building having his shops on the ground floor. He himself is illiterate and worked hard to ensure that his three children get education.

My eldest daughter is doing PhD. My younger daughter has completed MBA and my son is doing BBA. - Dahiya (translated from personal interviews)

Innovation case 5: multipurpose processing machine

Dharamveer Kamboj hails from a poor farmer family in the northern part of rural India. He studied in school until the 10th grade and then started assisting his father. Overburdened with loans, he decided to go to the nearby metropolitan city Delhi and work as a rickshaw puller to earn some money. He worked there for 2 years but had to return back to his village after meeting with an accident. He was bedridden for months and his family faced severe hardships. After recovering, he thought about growing medicinal herbs in his farm and visited the horticulture department in a small city called Ajmer in India. He had heard that there was a need for herbal plants during his stay in Delhi. Kamboj started with plants like aloe vera and stilia and built a small nursery.

Then came the problem of processing these herbal plants. He knew that there was a demand for aloe vera gel and he could make money by extracting and processing the aloe vera gel. But Kamboj did not have the money to buy the expensive machines existing in the market. Additionally, these machines could not carry out multiple functions that he wanted. Kamboj thought about building a processing machine something on the lines of a food processer which would not only extract pulp or juice from the plants that he was growing but also convert them into powder form. He borrowed money and struggled for 8 months in designing and building the machine. In 2005, he was able to build the first prototype. He took help of a local factory for fabrication and welding.

NIF scouted and helped commercialize his product. GIAN assisted Kamboj in product design improvement. Kamboj has made several changes in product design and the latest version is capable of extracting oil and juice from various herbs, fruits and vegetables. It can also work as pulp extractor, dry grinder, boiler, or sterilizer. It can be used to boil rice, make ketchup or puree from tomatoes, or make dry powder from spices or fruits. It can also be used to extract ripe mango pulp without breaking the seeds. Kamboj now earns a decent income per month that enables him to live comfortably and provide education to his children. He also provides employment to more than 25 people from the village in his manufacturing unit.

Cross-case analysis

Rq1: why do rural users innovate.

The common aspect found in all the five case studies was that the user innovators were poor and professionally dissatisfied. They had experienced hardships due to poverty in their lives. In case studies of Patel, Jagani, and Kamboj, we find that they innovated to automate a manual process that was time-consuming and laborious. Four case studies also reveal that the users innovated to fulfill a necessity for a low-cost solution as compared to the existing products in the market. For instance, Dahiya innovated a biofuel because the diesel was expensive, Jagni innovated a motorcycle-driven plough because tractors were very expensive, Prajapati innovated a mitticool fridge because existing market refrigerator unaffordable, and Kamboj innovated the multipurpose machine because the existing machines were expensive and offered limited functionality. However, Patel's need to innovate was driven by desire to alleviate drudgery of the manual cotton stripping process.

RQ2: how did the rural users innovate?

In this question, we tried to study the process of rural user innovation. We find that the users were well aware of their local need and the constraints of their environment. This drives them to develop an idea of a product. For example, Patel got an idea to build a machine for stripping cotton, Prajapati got an idea to build a clay-based refrigerator, Jagni got an idea to attach ploughing implements to a motorcycle, Dahiya thought of using the gas produced in his kiln, and Kamboj got an idea to build a machine on the lines of a food processor. The next step in the innovation process was to seek financial help to build the product, as all of them were poor. They primarily relied on informal means of obtaining finance either from family members or friends. All of them had little or no educational backgrounds and were not conversant with the process of obtaining financial support from financial institutions. Additionally, they had no collateral to submit to banks. After acquiring financial support from informal sources, they built an initial working prototype.

RQ3: how did rural users commercialize their products and become entrepreneurs?

The rural user innovators initially developed the product to meet their individual need but also thought about its commercial viability mainly to earn some money. They start using their product and show its use to other people living in their rural community. The rural innovators also tried to sell their product but were not able to successfully participate in the market and experienced a chasm. They tried to pick up business skills while on-the-job primarily through experiential learning. External organizations like NIF helped these rural innovators and they received financial support, without collateral, from NIF's Micro Venture Fund. They also receive marketing, intellectual property rights (IPR), and business development support through NIF and its partner organizations like GIAN, SRISTI, and Honey Bee network. Four rural user innovators, namely, Patel, Jagani, Dahiya, and Kamboj, received product design and development support from premier educational institutions in India with the help of NIF. As a result, they are able to improve their products and build technologically better commercial prototypes. With support from external institutions, they are able to sell the final product to more number of customers from different geographic locations in India. Some user entrepreneurs also sell their products in international markets like Dahiya received queries for his biomass gasifier from Africa, Germany, Singapore, and Pakistan. Prajapati has exported his mitticool refrigerator to Nairobi in Africa. Kamboj has exported his multipurpose processing machine to Kenya and has queries from Ethiopia.

RQ4: what is the impact on the individual rural entrepreneur?

We find that the five rural user entrepreneurs not only experience economic but also social gains. All the five rural entrepreneurs are able to generate livelihood for themselves and earn money by selling their products. All of them report that by becoming an entrepreneur they have been able to move out of poverty. In four cases, we also see increased productivity and efficiency of work. For instance, Patel reported his cotton stripper brought down cotton stripping cost from US$ 0.02 per kg to US$ 0.02 per 20 kg. All the five user entrepreneurs state that their entrepreneurial career has impacted them at a personal level. It has helped build self-confidence and has instilled a sense of self-respect. They proudly report that their community also respects them now as they have received national level recognition through awards and media coverage. All of them report that their standard of living has improved and they are now able to provide school and college education to their children.

RQ5: what is the impact of rural entrepreneurship on society or local community?

Through this research question we tried to explore whether there was any spillover effect of their entrepreneurial career on the society at large. We find that the creation of entrepreneurs, in our case rural user entrepreneurs, offers economic, social, and environmental gains for the society. Specifically, we find that customers get access to low-cost products like the mitticool refrigerator or the motorcycle-driven plough or low-cost biofuel. Two user entrepreneurs, namely, Patel and Kamboj, report their customers have experienced economic gains as reduced cost of production after using their machines. After analyzing the interview data of user entrepreneurs and the NIF chairman, we find that there is also a society-level impact like employment generation, improving quality of life for the poor, health benefits, and building a sense of pride in the community of the user entrepreneur. For example, Kamboj provides employment to 25 rural villagers in his small factory. Further, many rural women who bought Kamboj's machine have generated employment for themselves by processing and selling herbal products from their homes. Mitticool refrigerators offer cold water and food storage options to the poor. The cotton stripper offers health benefits by eliminating the harmful manual procedure traditionally used for cotton stripping.

All the five user entrepreneurs state that there has been a development of social pride within their communities. In one case, we find that the user entrepreneur has brought about change in their community, for instance, Kamboj states that there has been a parivartan ki lahar meaning ‘a wave of change’ that has enabled self-employment in whichever village his machine has reached. Finally, two case studies also reveal environmental benefits in the form of ecofriendly products like biofuel and clay-based natural refrigerators.

Towards a framework of rural user innovation and entrepreneurship in India

In this section, we discuss the findings of our study in the light of literature on user innovation theory and posit a framework of rural user innovation and entrepreneurship in India (see Figure  1 ). As discussed earlier, prior literature suggests that user innovation is driven by in-house use benefits (von Hippel 1988 , 2005 ). Prior literature also indicates that innovators develop their innovation using primarily the information and resources they have (Luthje et al. 2005 ). Prior literature on user entrepreneurship indicates that users innovate for their own use and only later discover the commercial possibilities in their products (Shah and Tripsas 2007 ). Finally, prior literature indicates that ‘lead’ users - those ahead of an important market trend - will tend to innovate (von Hippel 1986 ).

Results summary: framework of rural user innovation and entrepreneurship in India.

In our case studies, we observed that these factors hold in the case of rural innovators in India. The innovators' need for a low-cost solution or alleviating drudgery of their lives was their key driver for innovation. In other words, necessity is indeed the mother of invention in the case of rural user innovators. These are proposed as antecedent conditions/factors for rural user innovation in our model of rural user innovation and entrepreneurship in India (see Figure  1 ).

Driven by these antecedent factors, the rural user innovates and develops a product. His understanding of the local environment and its constraints shapes the product development process. Most of the rural innovators did not have any formal education or training; yet, it is this familiarity with their environment that enabled them to develop local solutions. They understand the needs as well as the constraints of the communities and its environment. This is in concurrence with the finding of Lujthe et al. ( 2005 ) where they suggest that user innovators mostly use ‘local’ information both for determining the need for and for developing solutions for their innovations. Lujthe and von Hippel (2006) define local information as knowledge already in possession of the innovators or the innovators themselves have generated it.

Next, we find that some of these innovations are built on existing products that are meant for purposes other than what the original product was meant for, like Jagni modified a motorcycle for use as a farm ploughing machine. This transformation is not unique to rural user innovations as prior literature also reports transformations in other cases of user innovation. The shooting films in video games (Haefliger et al. 2010 ) and the transformation of a phonograph turntable from a playback device into a musical instrument (Faulkner and Runde 2009 ) in its own right are examples of similar innovations with technological transformations.

The antecedent factors drive the user to conceptualize the idea for an innovative solution and the user now initiates the process of developing the user innovation (Figure  1 ). The process of rural user innovation is an interplay of local knowledge and innovative transformations in order to seek solutions for local problems and alleviate drudgery. The rural user tries to overcome his constraints by seeking financial and moral support from family and friends. This is represented as enabling factors for rural user innovation in the model. It is import to note that at this stage, the rural user is dependent only on his informal network for support. His low educational background, poor financial conditions, and limited knowledge on how to seek finance from financial institutions limit him to reach out to only his informal network for innovation development support.

In our five cases, the innovators were lead users with respect to the important general trend - driven by ‘bottom of the pyramid’ demand - for extremely low-cost solutions. In each case we studied, expensive solutions existed in the marketplace for the needs each experienced - but in each case, the rural innovators were too poor to purchase these solutions. In addition, given their poverty, the solutions were not appropriately designed to suit their needs. Thus, commercial tractors did exist which could perform the same task as the Jagni-modified motorcycle, which he developed as a farm ploughing machine. Similarly, commercial gas and electric refrigerators do exist which could perform the same task as Prajapati's evaporative cooling clay refrigerator. The innovations that these five entrepreneurs developed performed the functions of existing products - but filled a leading-edge marketplace demand in the sense of being well ahead on the dimension of low cost.

Going forward, having a good and useful innovation does not necessarily translate into an entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship literature suggests that to be an entrepreneurial individual, one needs to possess certain core human attributes (Shane 2003 ) like willingness to bear uncertainty (Kihlstrom and Laffont 1979 ), tolerance for ambiguity (Schere 1982 ), or need for achievement (McClelland 1961 ). We find in our case studies that the rural user innovators kept on trying despite their difficult living and working conditions. They all wanted to alleviate drudgery of their lives by innovating. In other words, as an individual, they all were willing to take risk and face uncertainty. They kept on trying even after losing money or their personal belongings like their house as seen in the case of Prajapati.

Further, if we look at the traditional model of new product development, we find that it is a process that starts with the generation of ideas, which undergoes a number of iterations and finally lead to the commercial launch of new products (Cooper and Kleinschmidt 1993 ; Cooper 1996 ; Fox et al. 1998 ). This is in line with the findings from all our case studies. We find that the rural user develops an idea and initiates the process of user innovation by building a prototype or initial product, which undergoes a series of changes before it could be commercialized. The cotton stripper was modified seven times over a period of 10 years. The motorcycle-driven plough, biomass gasifier, mitticool refrigerator, and multicrop thresher were all modified multiple times during the commercialization process.

Our case studies also reveal that rural innovators had poor understanding of obtaining formal finance from financial institutions, little exposure to the world at large, and limited technical know-how to make advanced product design modifications. As a result, there existed a chasm, which they had to overcome in order to bring their product to market and achieve profitable sales. This chasm or void was filled by the external organizations who not only provide financial support but also other forms of support, which is required to commercialize a product. Our finding is contrary to the finding of Lettl et al. ( 2006 ) where they report that users of medical equipment technology are not only inventors but also codevelopers. These advanced users play an entrepreneurial role and themselves organize the required innovation networks to commercialize their products. In our case studies, we find that the rural users are able to organize only informal innovation networks for seeking finance and resources to build their initial product. Due to their educational and financial backgrounds, they are unable to organize formal innovation networks to grow and achieve sales in markets outside their immediate community/village. Thus, a void or a chasm impedes their market participation and some form of external institutional support is required to enable participation in larger markets.

The literature on institutional voids also suggests that in many developing economies, formal institutional arrangements that support markets are absent, weak, or fail to achieve stated goals (Mair and Marti 2009 ). The biggest challenge for developing economies like India is to enable participation of the poor in markets. Puffer et al. ( 2010 ) used institutional theory to study entrepreneurship in China and Russia. They report slow development of efficient and legitimate formal institutions in Russia and China resulting in institutional voids. These entrepreneurs mainly relied on informal institutional arrangements of their trusted networks to fill the void of formal institutions. In our case studies, we also find that the rural users sought help from their informal network of family and friends. This is clearly different from the case of entrepreneurs from developed economies who operate with relatively higher certainty under effective formal institutions.

We find that external actors played an enabling role in product commercialization in our case studies. All the five rural user innovators took help from external organizations such as NIF, GIAN, SRISTI, and educational institutions in India such as IIT and others. Specifically, they got financial support, marketing and business development support, and IPR-related services from these external organizations. Therefore, in our model, we posit that the support provided by external actors like the government, non-government organizations, educational institutions, and private sector organizations act as critical enabling factors that can help the rural user entrepreneur cross the chasm by acquiring the required resources and skills to commercialize their product. This is a two-way interaction wherein the rural user entrepreneur primarily seeks financial support, but these external actors like NIF scout the rural innovator and extend not only financial but also marketing, business development, and legal support. We also posit that the rural user innovator is able to commercialize his product and become a user entrepreneur only when he possesses some individual level entrepreneurial traits like bearing risk and trying to build product prototypes despite all constrains (Figure  1 ).

After the commercialization of an innovation, the economic benefits for the entrepreneur are well documented (Wennekers and Thurik 1999 ; Van Praag and Versloot 2008 ). We found this to be true in our cases as they all were able to move out of poverty. In addition to the economic benefits, we found that there was a positive social impact on the lives of these rural user entrepreneurs. The user entrepreneurs enjoyed social recognition and also experienced greater self-esteem, social respect, and acceptability. For example, Patel's social acceptability took a dramatic turn with the success of his entrepreneurial venture. He was initially critiqued as a failure but after his entrepreneurial pursuit he became the ‘pride of his community.’ Furthermore, coverage of such stories by television channels like Discovery or NDTV increased confidence and self-esteem in rural user entrepreneurs.

In addition to the impact at an individual level, rural user entrepreneurship is likely to make a significant impact at the society or community level. The products innovated and commercialized for the rural level improve the users' quality of life by having access to products that are usually considered as basic necessities in developed economies. In addition, the commercialization of innovated products may also provide health benefits in the form of reduced harmful impacts as seen in the case of cotton stripper machine and the nonstick clay tawa . The use of cotton stripper increased the production and improved the quality of cotton ready for ginning, which increased profitability. This suggests that the increased efficiency and productivity with the use of the product also leads to the economic prosperity of its users. Instances of such cross-pollination would be in line with the suggestions of World Bank's published research (Dutz 2007 ) on increasing India's innovation potential. The report suggests that supporting networks and institutions like NIF and others can promote grassroots level rural innovations, which are likely to assist in poverty alleviation and sustainable development (Utz and Dahlman 2007 ).

As seen in the case of Prajapati, individuals who may have been considered ordinary on becoming successful can be a ‘source of pride’ for their community. On the whole, this sense of social pride is likely to lead to a feeling of well-being in communities. Furthermore, the products of rural user entrepreneurs can also offer environmental benefits and can possibly offer sustainable solutions for future generations. The case study of Prajapati's mitticool clay products and Dahiya's biomass gasifier discussed earlier is an example of environmental friendly products.

To conclude, in our framework, we suggest that antecedent conditions motivate rural users to initiate the process of rural user innovation. This rural user innovator is likely to commercialize his products and become a rural user entrepreneur with the help of enabling factors. Moving forward, rural user entrepreneurship is likely to have an individual level as well as societal/community level impact.

Conclusions

Implications for research, practice, and policy.

Innovation is seen as crucial vehicle for increasing India's growth and helping reduce poverty and rising living standards (Dutz 2007 ). Nearly 90% of India's workforce is employed in the informal sector, which is typically characterized by low productivity and low-skill activities, and about 60% is employed in the informal agriculture sector. India would benefit from encouraging rural level innovation by promoting creative efforts by the poor (Utz and Dahlman 2007 ). To overcome institutional voids in developing countries like India, there is a need to create and strengthen formal institutional arrangements that can support rural level innovation and entrepreneurship.

We studied cases of five rural user entrepreneurs using the case study research method. From our findings and cross-case analysis, we posit a framework which suggests that rural user innovation is likely to occur when there is a strong desire to alleviate drudgery and a need to fulfill a necessity for a low-cost local solution. Further, we suggest that rural users experience a chasm/void and the commercialization of their product is more likely to occur with the help of enabling factors, such as individuals (like friends and family) and external institutions (like the government and non-government organizations, educational institutions, and private sector organizations).

In addition to the economic benefits to the entrepreneur, we also found that there was a positive social impact on the lives of the rural user entrepreneurs. The rural user entrepreneurs enjoyed social recognition, experienced greater self-esteem, social respect, and acceptability. Further, rural user innovation and entrepreneurship is likely to make an impact at the community/society level also. The increased efficiency and productivity with the use of the product is likely to lead to the economic prosperity for its user community. The users of such products are likely to experience improved quality of life by gaining access to affordable low-cost products meeting their local needs. Further, some of these products can also offer health benefits in the form of reduced harmful impacts of existing products/methods as seen in the case of Patel's cotton stripping machine.

Overall, our study contributes to the growing area of user innovation and entrepreneurship. It extends the applicability of user innovation theory in the context of developing economies like India. However, our findings need to be supplemented with large-scale quantitative studies to draw generalizations. In particular, policymakers can help promote entrepreneurship in rural areas by creating innovative mechanisms and institutional arrangements that facilitate rural entrepreneur's participation in markets.

We followed Yin ( 2003 ) for our case research design and Miles and Huberman ( 1994 ) for analyzing the qualitative data.

Sample and data collection

We began our study with an online search for data on user innovation and entrepreneurship in rural India. This led us to online databases and websites of four nodal organizations for rural innovations in India, namely, National Innovation Foundation (NIF), Honeybee Network, Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions (SRISTI), and Grassroots Innovations Augmentation Network (GIAN). We crosschecked the applicability of these databases for our study with four academic experts in India.

We found that these organizations maintain a database of grassroots innovations and related activities. As part of the documentation, the members of Honey Bee network go on shodh yatras , which is a ‘journey of exploration’ to scout for innovations from rural India (Gupta 2006 ). They meet villagers, farmers, and artisans individually and prepare a report on their experiences. Finally, they create a documentation of the scouted innovation, which is maintained in an electronic database.

For data collection, first we used the online databases of NIF, SRISTI, Honey Bee, and GIAN to create our sampling frame, as they have an exhaustive list of rural innovations listed in its database since year 2000. Some examples of these rural innovations include agricultural machinery, food-processing machinery, bamboo-processing machinery, dairy machinery, handlooms and textile-related devices, and herbal products. NIF has tried to file over 550 patents on behalf of its listed innovators. Out of this, 35 patents have been granted in India and 4 have been granted in USA. NIF has Micro Venture Innovation Fund (MVIF), which has provided capital to 178 projects.

Next, we searched for cases of rural innovators who had turned into entrepreneurs. Using the user innovation theory, our selection criterion for a case of user innovation and entrepreneurship was whether the fundamental definition of user innovator was applicable to that case. In other words, we checked whether the rural user entrepreneur initially invented the product for his or her own use and then commercialized the product. We selected five entrepreneurs who had received commercialization support from NIF and/or GIAN. Our sampling was purposive and we do acknowledge that there could be other instances of rural user entrepreneurs in India. Our sample, even though purposive, had a potential to offer rich insights to lay the foundation for future research in this area.

Our unit of analysis or the ‘case’ was an individual user entrepreneur, and we used the multiple-case design (Yin 2003 , pp. 41). We conducted total 11 personal interviews. Eight in-depth personal interviews were conducted in the Indian national language ‘Hindi’ as the respondents were not conversant in English. Two in-depth interviews were conducted in a regional language ‘Gujarati’ with the help of a translator. The final interview with the NIF chairman was conducted in English. Before starting the interview process, we created an interview guide based on our research questions. The sub-questions and supporting probes were also written in the interview guide to facilitate the flow of the interview. The interview guide was translated in the local language wherever required. The interviews were tape-recorded. They were later translated and transcribed in English.

Each case of the rural user entrepreneur was used to understand why he invented the X product, how he invented the X product, how he commercialized the X product and became an entrepreneur (with probes on understanding the process and enabling factors), what was its impact on him at a personal level, and was there an impact of his entrepreneurial work on the society/his local community. The interview guide used for interview with the chairman of NIF was modified to understand the larger picture of rural innovation and entrepreneurship in India. For instance, the question ‘How did you commercialize the X product?’ was modified to ‘How did the innovators listed in NIF database commercialize their products? What was the role of NIF and other organizations in this process?’ These questions explored the impact and outcome of NIF's work at a national level.

Data reduction and coding

To begin with, we created high-level categories or codes deductively from user innovation and entrepreneurship theory to explore our research questions wherein codes were developed for user background, user innovation, enablers for innovation, user entrepreneurship, enablers for user entrepreneurship, and outcome of user entrepreneurship. These codes were further refined inductively using the data collected through personal interviews. The list of codes with few examples from translated interview transcripts is included in Table 2 of the paper.

Multiple sources of data and triangulation

Yin ( 2003 ) emphasizes that the strength of case study is in using a variety of evidence ranging from documents, reports, interviews, and observations. To strengthen our case study, we used a variety of evidence for data triangulation, which helped validate information from the interviews (Maxwell 1996 ). Our study includes primary data from personal interviews and secondary data from various sources like national level databases, company documents, reports, newspapers, and Internet sources (see Table 3 ). After each interview, we created individual case memos summarizing the interview. The primary data for each interview was triangulated with secondary data available from different sources listed in Table 3 . Finally, we then created individual case summaries from the triangulated data.

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Acknowledgements

We greatly acknowledge the support provided by the Fulbright Foundation -USIEF, Prof. Iqbal Z. Quadir and MIT's Legatum Center for conducting this study. We are thankful to Prof. Eric von Hippel and Prof. Susan Silbey of MIT for their review and continuous guidance while writing this paper. We would like to thank all the respondents - Mr. Patel, Mr. Prajapati, Mr. Jagani, Mr. Dahiya, and Mr. Kamboj for their participation in our research study. We are also thankful to Dr. R.A. Mashelkar and Prof. Anil Gupta for their support and input.

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VY conceived the research and worked on it during a Fulbright funded research fellowship year at MIT. Both VY and PG together worked on the paper, PG collected primary data from innovators, and VY collected primary data from chairman. Both VY and PG collected secondary data and analysed the primary and secondary data. Both drafted and coordinated the paper. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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The Landscape of Social Entrepreneurship: A Case Study of India

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This paper discusses the growth of Social Entrepreneurship in India and its ever-growing role in the county’s economy. India is yet a developing country, which needs many social entrepreneurs with progressive solutions to society’s economic, social and environmental problems in the areas such as poverty, unemployment, hunger, sanitation, skill development, primary education, gender and caste bias, poor health facilities, pollution and water scarcity. These problems have been persistent and need imperative and permanent solutions. Although the philanthropic concept of ‘giving back’ has always existed in India, the fusion concept of doing social welfare on a more sustainable basis as a business is relatively new. The modern Indian social enterprise ecosystem is quite developed and, the government as well as many enterprising and capable citizens and non-profit organizations have come forward over time to help the society overcome problems. However, the struggles and problems in doing so have also been long and persistent. This paper shares a consolidated view of the social entrepreneurship ecosystem in India and some examples of exemplary social entrepreneurs who have been substantially contributing their might to the effort. The government of India clearly realizes the double benefits of generating employment and developing the neglected sectors of the economy through social entrepreneurship and consequently, is making huge efforts to encourage it through its affirmative action. This paper throws light on such programmes and efforts too. The research is based on a comprehensive study of social entrepreneurs and reports on social entrepreneurship by various governmental and non-governmental organizations.

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Tyagi, P. (2023). The Landscape of Social Entrepreneurship: A Case Study of India. In: Popkova, E.G., Sergi, B.S. (eds) Current Problems of the Global Environmental Economy Under the Conditions of Climate Change and the Perspectives of Sustainable Development. Advances in Global Change Research, vol 73. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19979-0_49

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A Case Study On Exploring the Challenges of Women Entrepreneurs in India: Insights on Limited Social Support and Intense Competition

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This case study focuses on the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs in India due to lack of social support and stiff competition. It highlights the example of one real and recent Indian women entrepreneur, Megha Sharma was the founder and CEO of a company called "The Saffron Touch," who faced these challenges and overcame them through innovative strategies such as crowd funding, networking, and digital marketing. The case study also identifies strategies that women entrepreneurs can adopt to overcome these challenges, such as participating in networking events and joining women entrepreneur groups, using digital marketing strategies, and using crowd funding platforms. The case study also underscores the importance of determination and hard work in achieving success as a women entrepreneur. The case study also points out the significance of Government and non-government organizations in supporting women entrepreneurs in India.

Keywords: Women Entrepreneurs, India, Social Support, Competition, Financing, Marketing, Strategies, Crowdfunding, Networking, Digital Marketing, Economic Growth

JEL Classification: L26, O14, O16, J16, J24

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Mr. Vivek khanna is from Arunachal Pradesh and holds masters degree in computer science with 10 years of experience in IT industry. He always had a dream of starting his own business venture but was confused about which industry to invest.

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Mr. nitin setia 13 jul 2015.

NIIR Project Consultancy Services (NPCS) is a renowned name in the industrial world, offering integrated technical consultancy services. Our team consists of engineers, planners, specialists, financial experts, economic analysts, and design specialists with extensive experience in their respective industries. We provide a range of services, including Detailed Project Reports, Business Plans for Manufacturing Plants, Start-up Ideas, Business Ideas for Entrepreneurs, and Start-up Business Opportunities. Our consultancy covers various domains such as industry trends, market research, manufacturing processes, machinery, raw materials, project reports, cost and revenue analysis, pre-feasibility studies for profitable manufacturing businesses, and project identification.

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Market Study and Assessment

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Plant and Machinery

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• Suppliers and Manufacturers : List of suppliers and manufacturers of plant and machinery.

Manufacturing Process and Formulations

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Project at a Glance

Our reports provide a snapshot of the project, including:

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• Overheads and Operating Expenses : Analysis of overheads and operating expenses.
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• Break-Even Analysis : Analysis of the break-even point.

Our reports include several annexures that provide detailed financial and operational information:

• Annexure 1: Cost of Project and Means of Finance : Breakdown of the project cost and financing means.
• Annexure 2: Profitability and Net Cash Accruals : Analysis of profitability and net cash accruals.
• Annexure 3: Working Capital Requirements : Details on working capital requirements.
• Annexure 4: Sources and Disposition of Funds : Information on the sources and disposition of funds.
• Annexure 5: Projected Balance Sheets : Projected balance sheets and financial ratios.
• Annexure 6: Profitability Ratios : Analysis of profitability ratios.
• Annexure 7: Break-Even Analysis : Detailed break-even analysis.
• Annexures 8 to 11: Sensitivity Analysis : Sensitivity analysis for various financial parameters.
• Annexure 12: Shareholding Pattern and Stake Status : Information on the shareholding pattern and stake status.
• Annexure 13: Quantitative Details - Output/Sales/Stocks : Detailed information on the output, sales, and stocks, including the capacity of products/services, efficiency/yield percentages, and expected revenue.
• Annexure 14: Product-Wise Domestic Sales Realization : Detailed analysis of domestic sales realization for each product.
• Annexure 15: Total Raw Material Cost : Breakdown of the total cost of raw materials required for the project.
• Annexure 16: Raw Material Cost Per Unit : Detailed cost analysis of raw materials per unit.
• Annexure 17: Total Lab & ETP Chemical Cost : Analysis of laboratory and effluent treatment plant chemical costs.
• Annexure 18: Consumables, Store, etc. : Details on the cost of consumables and store items.
• Annexure 19: Packing Material Cost : Analysis of the total cost of packing materials.
• Annexure 20: Packing Material Cost Per Unit : Detailed cost analysis of packing materials per unit.
• Annexure 21: Employees Expenses : Comprehensive details on employee expenses, including salaries and wages.
• Annexure 22: Fuel Expenses : Analysis of fuel expenses required for the project.
• Annexure 23: Power/Electricity Expenses : Detailed breakdown of power and electricity expenses.
• Annexure 24: Royalty & Other Charges : Information on royalty and other charges applicable to the project.
• Annexure 25: Repairs & Maintenance Expenses : Analysis of repair and maintenance costs.
• Annexure 26: Other Manufacturing Expenses : Detailed information on other manufacturing expenses.
• Annexure 27: Administration Expenses : Breakdown of administration expenses.
• Annexure 28: Selling Expenses : Analysis of selling expenses.
• Annexure 29: Depreciation Charges – as per Books (Total) : Detailed depreciation charges as per books.
• Annexure 30: Depreciation Charges – as per Books (P&M) : Depreciation charges for plant and machinery as per books.
• Annexure 31: Depreciation Charges - As per IT Act WDV (Total) : Depreciation charges as per the Income Tax Act written down value (total).
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• Published: 05 August 2023

Evaluation of factors affecting entrepreneurship: a case of Indian women in the handicraft industry

• Uma Shankar Yadav   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5855-0983 1 ,
• Ravindra Tripathi 1 ,
• Mano Ashish Tripathi 1 ,
• Ashish Kumar 1 &
• Mitu Mandal 1  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  10 , Article number:  480 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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In the current scenario, the level of interest is increasing in female entrepreneurship in the handicraft sector worldwide. So the primary purpose of this study is to discover the different constructs that influence women entrepreneurs in India as learner students or after completion of their degree, either skill degree or professional degree. Female entrepreneurship is an important feature of economic progress, particularly in developing nations, since it provides opportunities for innovation, cultural and traditional connectivity, job creation, poverty reduction, socio-economic growth, etc. However, despite its significance, this study has garnered little attention in the entrepreneurship literature. For this research, we used Survey research and convenience sampling. For data analysis, AMOS 25 software was used; where needed, we used an Excel sheet for table formation. At the same time, traditional cultural constraints have tended to study Indian women’s participation in handicraft entrepreneurship. It has been seen that most Indian female entrepreneurs are successful in their businesses. These females are engaged in banking, manufacturing, food and beverage, electronic, textile, and small industries. However, the Indian government is trying to motivate female entrepreneurs in the handicraft industry, but there is less number of women entrepreneurship in these sectors due to many factors. Just a handful has benefited through initiative, especially in the handicraft industry. Furthermore, only a few research articles have focused on the effect of essential elements. The research provides an Entrepreneurship Event Model, a Theory of Planned Behaviour, and an integrated model of the theory, which is evaluated using data from some Indian Institutions focused on entrepreneurship.

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Introduction.

Generally, entrepreneurship is establishing a new company or revitalising an established business to capitalise on new opportunities. Entrepreneurship is now an internationally recognised innovation process mobilising people and resources (Tripathi & Singh, 2017 ). In the previous few decades, women’s employment and economic growth efforts have significantly increased. Female entrepreneurship is among the most potent engines encouraging empowerment, job creation, development, and economic growth (Laudano et al., 2019b ). Although females have begun to show a significant interest in business ventures, we continue to see a decline in the quantity of women handicraft entrepreneurs in several emerging economies due to cultural differences. There is a lack of proper training and skill education provided to females. This is the opposite in the case of men because there is an enormous scope of skill training, and vocational education is provided to males interested in starting a new business (Chatterjee et al., 2018 ). Previous data also reveals that females receive less attention and appreciation than their male colleagues in starting a new business in any sector. This could be credited to various reasons, adding that entrepreneurship is dominated by men, a lack of women’s education and skill training, and low confidence among females in their capacity to succeed in handicraft sector entrepreneurship (AlMunajjed, 2019 ; Ribeiro-Soriano, 2017 ).

Although women significantly impact the global economy, there is limited research on female handicraft entrepreneurship. The research on female entrepreneurship comprises smaller investors, which refers to establishing a new company or revitalising a present enterprise to capitalise on new prospects (Welsh et al., 2014 ; Meyer & Hamilton, 2020 ). In the digital era, the role of females in the household or handmade industry is increasing yearly because they contribute to family income and increase India’s GDP (Chowdhury et al., 2018 ). Entrepreneurship run by females is regarded as one of the most potent engines for employment generation, economic growth and women empowerment and inclusive development of rural businesses run by females (Yadav et al., 2022a ). Even though female entrepreneurs show a significant interest in entrepreneurial activities, many developing countries and their cultures show a significant and continuous decline in the quantity of ladies’ engagement as entrepreneurs in the handicraft sector. According to Mehtap et al. ( 2017 ), women are not given the same education and training opportunities as males interested in starting a new business. Female entrepreneurship research accounts for fewer than 10% of all research. However, new academic interest in women’s handmade ownership has sparked many studies in India, focusing on identifying entrepreneurial attributes and overcoming hurdles (Chatterjee et al., 2018 ; Khan, 2019 ).

Furthermore, while female labour-force participation in India reached 17.5 % in 2019, the unemployment rate in women was 41.9 % in 2019 (Bazan et al., 2019 ). "Female entrepreneurship index" released by Garman-watch in 2015, the number of female entrepreneurs in the top three countries is the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom, and the position of India is 54th out of 77 countries worldwide. Indian women craft entrepreneurs continue to encounter several hurdles and social and cultural barriers that prevent females from entering business marketing (Yadav et al., 2022b ). According to research, female entrepreneurs face more hurdles than their male counterparts in the Indian traditional and patriarchal communities (Kamberidou, 2020 ). In earlier research, studies are scarce on several factors affecting female entrepreneurial inclinations in emerging economies, especially India (Yadav et al., 2020 ). Realistically, women’s labour-force participation is a high objective in India’s national development strategy, and various national and private programmes are underway to boost women’s labour-force involvement. For example, the Ministry of Skill development and entrepreneurship (MSDE) that was established by the Government of India for the promotion of skill development and entrepreneurship among young Indian men/women to become entrepreneurs.

Similarly, the Centenary Fund, a non-profit institution, assists young women in India with grants, finance and funds for their interest in craft projects. Similarly, the Indian Institute of carpet technology Bhadohi, an Indian institute of entrepreneurship and skill development programme, fosters training and entrepreneurial culture for young female research scholars involved in entrepreneurship. Furthermore, Baba Shahab University Lucknow and the Indian Institute of skill development entrepreneurship, Kanpur, and Ahmadabad have established the incubation centre, Entrepreneurial and Business Innovation Research Centre and started to train and teach young craft women in the growth of handmade entrepreneurship. Similarly, the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, Indian Institute of skill development, Entrepreneurship Ahmedabad, IIT Delhi, the national institution for transforming India (NITI) Ayog, New Delhi, have created a variety of programmes and scholarships to help women develop their entrepreneurial skills and talents (Tripathi & Singh, 2017 ).

Furthermore, the India “Vision 2047” document has been published by NITI Aayog. It is planned to take females to new heights of economic empowerment and leadership in a very particular and deliberate manner (Yadav et al., 2022b ). However, this goal cannot be realised without studying and knowing what the young Indian generation of women desires and what influences them to become employers transforming from workers. Due to non-interest or research in women’s entrepreneurship, especially in the handicraft sector, there is a fundamental problem in understanding how young female students want to pursue business and degrees in entrepreneurship; there is a lack of study. Future studies should listen to the experiences of Indian women who want to start businesses, and this article proposes a study to observe the negative impact of factors by analysing the motivations of female college graduates to start their businesses.

Indian handmade industry and the role of women in the handmade industry

The Indian handicraft industry is one of the oldest traditional and religious industries, the backbone of the Indian economy since the Mauryan period. It is a sustainable, durable, utility-driven, decorative industry and has a vast export history at the global level (Yadav et al., 2020 ). In the Mughal period, the share of this industry was 33% of world exports, but after the discovery of machines, the industry’s value decreased yearly. Now the share of the global handicraft industry is only 0.8 % of the global GDP, and the women workforce in the handicraft industry is growing slowly. They are transforming themselves from workers to entrepreneurs (Joshi & Dhar, 2022 ), and different characteristics affect the Indian handicraft industry to be the hub of the global handicraft sector. These factors are advanced technology, women’s involvement, and a special economic zone for the handicraft industry with the help of government motivation to this sector (Khan et al., 2021 ).

Indian handicraft sector comprises a large population living in rural and tribal areas, where most craft work is designed. Most of the women are involved in the handicraft industry in these areas. When the production of craft products will be demand by consumers, artisans will make products as per their demand (Yadav et al., 2020 ). Craftspeople, like those at the Shelf Help Group and other nongovernmental organisations, also referred to as (NGOs) led by Indian women, will be in demand. Workers will be able to make decent money thanks to the rising demand for goods and the subsequent increase in consumer spending (Shafi et al., 2021 ).

Significance of the study

This study has multiple implications for philosophy and practice for women’s entrepreneurial development in the handicraft sector. This is the first empirical study to conduct a systematic literature review on entrepreneurship related to females and propose multiple dimensions for future study. Secondly, it examines the factors—including education towards entrepreneurship, anticipated support from society, self-efficacy, innovativeness, benevolence, and so on—that contribute to young women’s desire and behaviour in the realm of entrepreneurship, drawing from theoretical models like the Entrepreneurial Event Model and the Planned Behaviour Theory. This study gives the idea to workers, entrepreneurs and the government to set up their businesses in such a way as to increase the income of individuals and the GDP of the country with employment generation. It will give the women entrepreneurs financial empowerment and happiness on the face of the women. Finally, this study has implications for educational institutions and other public and private institutions, including the government, in promoting such levels of Education and programmes. It includes training and hands-on skill development as part of the overall curriculum to encourage professional female students to take an interest in an entrepreneurial career in the craft industry (Brush & Cooper, 2012 ).

This study significantly contributes to small and medium enterprises led by women, especially in the handicraft sector in India and at the global level. This will help researchers, policymakers, and managers make the right decisions for promoting and developing the handicraft sector. This will increase the employment generation, happiness level, and women empowerment and finally increase the GDP.

Literature review

The literature study helps understand the evolution of the literature on female entrepreneurship and identifies gaps in existing research. The phrases "female entrepreneurship" or "female entrepreneur" are comprehensive enough to pull up any research on the topic" they were searched throughout the abstract, title of the article, and keywords in the Scopus database, yielding 1,169 results. Because many papers were not directly related to this research, the search query was further restricted by including the keyword "intention" in it. This yielded 47 articles, with full access granted to 30 empirical papers that explored the factors influencing female entrepreneurs’ inclination to launch a new enterprise. These studies served as a foundation for reviewing and identifying research gaps. Shabsough et al. ( 2021 ), for example, sought to comprehend gender variations in entrepreneurial goals. The proposed model was developed using feminist theory, the theory of planned behaviour, and institutional theory. According to the findings, Bulgarian female university students had lower entrepreneurial inclinations than men. Fallatah ( 2012 ) sought to determine whether there is a deviation in entrepreneurial inclinations between men and women scholars in India.

The study examined first-year business students at a Women’s College in India. The data revealed that both men and women students had a significant desire to become future entrepreneurs. However, female students demonstrated more robust risk-taking behaviour than male students, contradicting previous research findings that female students were more conservative regarding risk-taking than males. They sought to investigate the impact of gender disparities among potential entrepreneurs, their psychosocial features, and the enticements and significant hurdles female entrepreneurs face when launching a new venture. The study included 1400 students from IIM Ahmadabad. According to the data, women entrepreneurs are less likely to establish a business, and fear of failure is a significant barrier to starting a new venture. Bhatti et al. ( 2021 ) sought to investigate the data of knowledge and assistance for Indian female owners embarking on a new venture.

The research revealed that women are crucial in most (52%) female-dominated enterprises (Abebe & Kegne, 2023 ; Chaudhary et al., 2018 ). According to Table 2 , 70% of women own more than 51% of firms, while 41% started the business independently. The findings also revealed that Indian handicraft entrepreneurs are less educated, especially in the skill and technology stream. Still, they are much more friendly, emotional, and supportive. In terms of traditional skills, they are highly dedicated to carft and traditional work, innovative in Teamwork. They are advanced in concept, design development, product invention, and fundamental management. Bhatti et al. ( 2021 ) wanted to see if there is a gender difference in the relationship between entrepreneurial objectives and personality. The findings indicate that the degree of entrepreneurial ambitions differs by gender, with males showing more inclinations toward venture development than women.

In addition, the results showed that self-efficacy’ is not a significant factor in determining entrepreneurial aspirations across sexes. Alonso-Galicia et al. ( 2015 ), using the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) and another existing model, entrepreneurial intents (EI), studied the effect of gender on Spanish academics’ views about the commercialisation of their research outputs. The results showed that males and females had different perspectives on the effects of private social networks, particularly the help with managing one’s attitude and behaviour to foster EI Female tourism students’ aspirations to become entrepreneurs were studied (Sandhu et al., 2021 ). The results showed that students’ entrepreneurial intentions and subjective norms toward self-employment improved towards the end of the tourism curriculum, although they had been poor initially. A Spanish professor explained the influence of online communities on entrepreneurial intention (EI) (Vrontis et al., 2022 ). The results showed that male and female academics have different views on the importance of having a support network and using available resources when starting a business. High-level entrepreneurship in Europe was studied by Fernandez-Perez et al. ( 2015 ) both before and after the financial crisis of 2008.

The research results pointed out that opportunities related to the handicraft business significantly impacted entrepreneurship during the recession period in emerging economies. The results also showed that gender disparities significantly affected entrepreneurs’ ambitions for rapid expansion during the recession, with women faring worse than men. Researchers in Iran (Giotopoulos et al., 2017 ; Chowdhury et al., 2018 ) looked into what drives women business owners and managers to work from home. The data suggest that women are motivated mainly by intrinsic factors like the pursuit of independence and self-achievement, the display of knowledge, and the overcoming of socio-cultural challenges. Money worries, contractual opportunities, positive feedback, and the challenges of working from home all have an extrinsic effect on them. The factors affecting the expansion goals of Indian women business owners have also been studied (Yadav et al., 2022c ; Modarresi et al., 2016 ). The results showed that their abilities were essential and that having family support mediated the relationship between their growth mindset and their growth goals.

Ribeiro-Soriano ( 2017 ) wanted to see what Indian women students are involved in the handicraft business. He thought about Social and cultural challenges to entrepreneurial innovation. Based on a sample of 254 from 5 Indian institutions where female students are most involved in a study about female entrepreneurship show that an excellent supporting education system may lower anticipated potential hurdles to entrepreneurship—investigated the impact of female handmade entrepreneurial goals on creativity. The findings revealed that creativity is a crucial predictor of entrepreneurial ambitions. That family background is more favourable to entrepreneurial endeavours (Mylonas et al., 2017 ) suggested a model incorporating technology aspects into the TPB to better assess women’s handicraft entrepreneurship intentions, particularly in the case of India. The conceptual study will be validated with data collected to interpret the impact of various factors on the entrepreneurial intentions of Indian women. Ferri et al. ( 2018 ) and Aleidi & Chandran ( 2018 ) observed the Arebiyan female intention regarding handicraft entrepreneurship. According to the findings, societal pressure and anticipated behavioural control influenced their desire to become entrepreneurs.

Similarly, Sandhu et al. ( 2021 ) sought to investigate how entrepreneurial colleges might accelerate entrepreneurial activity in women by focusing on contextual aspects, personality traits, and psychological and entrepreneurial activity that reassure entrepreneurial intention. The findings suggested that universities dedicated to entrepreneurial teaching and research have significantly influenced women’s antecedent feasibility entrepreneurial attitudes and ambitions in European countries like Albania and Italy. Furthermore, the need for independence was a significant element in the Italian sample, but the need for achievement was significant in the Albanian sample (Laudano et al., 2018a ; de Castro Krakauer et al., 2018 ; Ahmad et al., 2018 ). They Investigated the impact of the entrepreneurial profile of Brazilian women on their motivation to establish a business. According to the research, the behavioural categories that have the more impact on the intention of entrepreneurship in Brazilian women include sociability, planning, leadership, and spotting opportunities. The theory that a woman’s entrepreneurial profile influences her objectives was also proven. Laudano et al. ( 2018a ) investigated when entrepreneurial Education is included in the system and how gender inequalities change entrepreneurial intentions.

The data suggested that there is an adverse effect of Feminist perception among students who are female ’EI rather than the type of programmes. van Ewijk, Belghiti-Mahut ( 2019 ) tried to investigate female craft entrepreneurs’ attitudes toward entrepreneurship, examine the entrepreneurial intentions among students, and measure the impact of entrepreneurial orientation towards the handmade industry. Their findings revealed that craft-related entrepreneurship education was significant for female students with a propensity for entrepreneurship as a career goal. Prabha Devi et al. ( 2019 ) and Tlaiss ( 2015 ) sought to investigate the factors that encourage entrepreneurial mindsets in women in India. According to the data, government and entrepreneurship training are the most important factors influencing women to become entrepreneurs. Khan ( 2019 ) investigated the impact of non-Religious marriages, which do not follow the norm of tradition and culture, such as love marriage, court marriage, arranged marriage, and forced marriage. This female moves toward entrepreneurship either in the handicraft sector or other sectors. Muhammad et al. ( 2019 ) examined EI among the students of an Indian women’s university.

The findings revealed that entrepreneurial mentality, societal norms, skill training capacity, behavioural control, and entrepreneurial Education affect the entrepreneurs willing to start a business in the craft industry. Anwar et al. ( 2020 ) and Onalan & Magda ( 2020 ) have investigated the effect of motivational perseverance on intolerance to uncertainty in female entrepreneurs versus non-entrepreneurs. According to the findings, female entrepreneurs demonstrated more motivational perseverance in following stable and existing goals. They try to attain their goal rather than the non-entrepreneurial goal. Ferdousi & Mahmud ( 2019 ) and Meyer & Hamilton ( 2020 ) have sought to compare the diversity in various traditional entrepreneurial aspects between those females working with a degree and those who did not have a degree but were entrepreneurs. According to the findings, business growth variables, goal to build the business, External motivation, entrepreneurial Education, and training all provided statistically significant values (Onalan & Magda, 2020 ). The findings have investigated the function of a network of social terms in regulating the link between adhesive floor opinion (i.e., an unseen barrier that hinders women since growing a particular level of the given organisations afar) and women entrepreneurs’ EI. Social networking has a larger favourable link with EI in women with a high sticky floor impression (Shabsough et al., 2021 ; Poggesi et al., 2020 ). They investigated the elements that influence EI and innovation in the craft industry. The analysis indicated that risk-taking attitudes, subjective norms, empowerment, and self-efficacy substantially influence women’s EI in the hotel business. Yoopetch ( 2020 ) assessed the difference in cognitive characteristics before and after a training programme and Education in entrepreneurship, especially in the handicraft sector, besides the effect of cognitive characteristics on EI among females in India.

According to the findings, entrepreneurial training and training programmes significantly improve female students’ EI and psychological characteristics. On another side, it was discovered that psychological characteristics such as self-confidence, ambiguity tolerance, training retention, innovativeness, and motivation for accomplishment have positively impacted EI. Bhatti et al. ( 2021 ) reviewed the literature on entrepreneurship and gender appeared to be one of the most protuberant variables related to demography thus the male engagement is more significant than female entrepreneurship, despite female entrepreneurship being on the rise (Kock et al., 2021 ; Sandhu et al., 2021 ). It was proposed that Education in entrepreneurship, involvement in business conferences, workshops at IIT, IIM, NIT, IISC, or universities, and female students’ participation in the advanced events and advance centre might help female scholars from India’s EI. The study also discovered that all three educational events improved their EI (Kumar et al., 2022 ; Alferaih, 2017 ; Shahin et al., 2021 ). They observed the EI female students from secondary schools in Australia. Skills and personality development, explicitly in craft making stone carving gems, jewellery, wooden work, paper product, jute bag making, pottery industry, etc., by risk-taking creative thinking, leadership development, and problem-solving, was discovered to be a crucial factor affecting young female students’ entrepreneurial views. According to a survey of all known research on female entrepreneurship, they have employed a variety of empirical investigations to determine their aspirations to establish a firm (Venugopal, 2016 ; Yadav & Unni, 2016 ; Ezeh et al., 2019 ).

However, research on the crucial components that originate from the underlying theoretical models is lacking. A model to evaluate women’s aspirations to start their businesses is proposed, with inventiveness and expected social support among the critical contextual factors. These women attend Indian public universities for various degree levels (Schlaegel & Koenig, 2014 ).

Conceptual foundation, hypothesis development, and proposed conceptual model

There are two Research models used in the proposal of the conceptual model. First is the Theory of Planned Behaviour(TPB) (Alonso-Galicia et al., 2015 ; Mylonas et al., 2017 ), and second is the Entrepreneurial Event Model (Aleidi & Chandran, 2018 ; Fitzsimmons & Douglas, 2011 ) has been used in the past to decipher people’s entrepreneurial intentions and actions. Other scholars have argued that combining TPB with EEM will yield better outcomes and overall performance (Ajzen, 1991 ; Schlaegel & Koenig, 2014 ). In this paper, we’ll take a comprehensive look at the EEM and TPB to see how they fit together and then offer a research model that makes more sense.

Theory of planned behaviour (TPB)

The most popular, commonly studied psychological approach is the TPB, which asserts that an anticipated behavioural control (ABC), subjective norm, and an individual’s attitude influence intentions, eventually shaping the total behaviour (Yadav et al., 2022d ; Gieure et al., 2019 ; Urban & Kujinga, 2017 ). The amount to which a person has a positive or negative perspective and viewpoint on a subject or behaviour is their attitude toward behaviour. TPB is another crucial concept, the subjective model, which indicates the heaviness put on a person due to their references, such as relatives, colleagues, co-workers, and so on, whether or not to conduct a specific nature. Finally, anticipated applied control, the final construct, reflects how complex or straightforward the behaviour in question is seen to be. According to this Model, the intention of individuals to do a specific action grows under their anticipated skill, and human beings begin entrepreneurial events, which wish they have enough skill to start an enterprise and such creativity is acceptable in our society (Gurel et al., 2010 ; Shapero & Sokol, 1982 ).

This model has been suggested and empirically evaluated in various research (e.g., Devonish et al., 2010 ; Sharahiley ( 2020 )) to analyse individuals’ purpose in thinking of new business). Another empirical model thoroughly explored in the entrepreneurial literature is the entrepreneurial event model. It also includes three fundamental constructs: (anticipated feasibility, anticipated inclination, and inclination to act), all of which affect the inspiration of entrepreneurs, also called entrepreneurial intention in the handicraft industry or other industries (Foss et al., 2019 ; Karimi et al., 2013 ).

Anticipated feasibility is the elaborate degree to which a person believes in their ability to launch a new venture and thinks doing so is a viable career option. Similarly, the anticipated desirability, the degree to which an individual is fully confident to launch a new business, might be considered the intensity with which they wish to do so after carefully weighing all relevant factors. In evaluating an appropriate action, the propensity to act is a once predisposition to launch a novel business (Giménez & Calabrò, 2018 ; Guerrero et al., 2008 ; Schlaegel and Koenig, 2014 ).

Several additional studies have provided the TPB-EEM-based cohesive research standard to gauge an individual’s propensity to launch a handicraft business. For instance, the TPB-EEM-based integrated research model was shown to be the best model for investigating entrepreneurism tendencies in a meta-analysis of 130 studies (Alferaih, 2017 ). After further testing with primary data, it was found (De Clercq & Brieger, 2022 ; Sharahiley, 2020 ) that the integrated model significantly outperformed the component models, with significantly greater exploratory power. (Kumar et al., 2022 ), Alferaih ( 2017 ), Laudano et al. ( 2018 b) provided an integrated model of EEM and TPB built upon a meta-analysis of 95 papers alongside 130 samples and demonstrated the model’s additional exploratory capacity through that procedure. The integrated TPB and EEM model also suggests an integrated model that considers the existing body of data and the stability of the combined model.

The suggested model incorporates all three central concepts from the TPB (attitude, PCB, and subjective norm) and the two central concepts from the EEM (anticipated feasibility and anticipated desirability). External variables like innovativeness and anticipated social support also have a role in shaping EB. The selection of innovativeness and felt social support is primarily grounded in the goals of this study. Women business owners, for instance, are 5% more likely to be inventive than men (Majumdar & Varadarajan, 2013 ).

As a result, it is essential to examine the success of innovation in India as a new entrepreneurial environment where the government is adaptable enough to provide women with every business advantage. To investigate whether female business owners receive the typical amount of social support, an extra construct of “perceived social support” was introduced (Younis et al., 2020 ). The proposed research paradigm includes nine hypothesis: four mediation hypothesis and eight direct hypotheses. Figure 1 presents the proposed research paradigm together with the appropriate direction.

In Figure 1, Nine hypothesis are included in the suggested research paradigm, including eight direct hypothesis and four mediation hypotheses, showing the conceptual hypothesis model. In this model, External variables are innovativeness and anticipated social support. It also includes external characteristics such as anticipated social support and innovativeness to impact entrepreneurial activity. The proposed mode presents all of the TPB’s fundamental concepts—attitude, ACB, and subjective norm. The suggested model incorporates all variables, such as anticipated behavioural control, subjective norm, and attitude, as well as the EEM’s two fundamental constructs, anticipated feasibility and anticipated attractiveness. Source: Adapted from (Ajzen, 1991 ; Shapero & Sokol, 1982 ; Tripathi et al., 2020).

Research gap

From the literature review, it has been clear that many studies have been done on entrepreneurial intention, entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial antecedent and entrepreneurial attitude in industrial and small-scale industries, even though much research has been done in global scenarios related to the handicraft sector and entrepreneurship. But applying innovativeness and digitalisation in the Indian handicraft sector and its impact on women entrepreneurs has not been available. There is also a gap between its financial impact on new craft entrepreneurs. In India, studies are related to students and professionals studying entrepreneurship and female entrepreneurial behaviour in the handicraft sector, but there is a lack of study. So in this article, we have tried to understand and investigate the antecedent impact of entrepreneurial behaviour, attitude, subjective norm, and antecedent of social support on women entrepreneurship. We hope this study will support the research, industrialist and other students in this field.

This study also suggests an integrated model based on these distinct models, considering past evidence and the robustness of the model combining the EEM and TPB. The suggested model incorporates all of the TPB’s essential components, such as anticipated behavioural control, subjective norm, and attitude, as well as the EEM’s two fundamental constructs, anticipated feasibility and anticipated attractiveness. It also includes external characteristics such as anticipated social support and innovativeness to impact entrepreneurial activity (Laudano et al., 2018a , b ). All three of the TPB’s fundamental concepts—attitude, ACB, and subjective norm—are present in the proposed model, as are the EEM’s two central concepts—anticipated feasibility and anticipated inclination. External variables like innovativeness, digitalisation, and anticipated social support also shape EB. Most justification for using innovativeness and anticipated social support comes from the study’s setting. Previous studies have found, for instance, that Indian female entrepreneurs are 8% more likely to be inventive than male entrepreneurs (Yadav et al., 2022b ). As a result, examining the success of innovation in India is essential. A new entrepreneurial environment where the government is adaptable enough to offer full support to women business owners. To investigate whether female business owners receive the typical amount of social support, an extra construct of “Anticipated social support” was introduced (Younis et al., 2020 ). Nine hypotheses are included in the suggested research paradigm. Figure 1 depicts the proposed research hypothesis.

Proposed hypothesis

Entrepreneurial intention and anticipated feasibility.

Anticipated feasibility is a person’s impression of the potential future circumstances linked with launching a new endeavour. It is also related to an individual level of confidence in his ability to become a successful entrepreneur (Schlaegel & Koenig, 2014 ). Several other researchers have validated the influence of anticipated feasibility on entrepreneurial intention through meta-analytic review (Martínez-Rodríguez et al., 2022 ; Guerrero et al., 2008 ) and empirical validation. As an output of the given debate, the authors have proposed the following Hypothesis:

H1: Anticipated feasibility affects entrepreneurial intention positively .

Anticipated inclination vs. entrepreneurial intention

The desire to set up a new venture is an anticipated inclination (Sharahiley, 2020 ). Existing research supports the positive association between anticipated and entrepreneurial inclination (Schlaegel & Koenig, 2014 ; Tripathi et al., 2022 ). As a result, the authors present the following Hypothesis:

H2. Anticipated inclination significantly affects a person ’ s intention to establish a new business .

Entrepreneurial intention and attitude related to skill learning

Attitude is "the extent to which an entrepreneur adopts a confirmatory or contradictory evaluation of starting a new business" (Prabha Devi et al., 2019 ). The more someone says they want to establish a business, the more likely they will do so independently (Aizen, 1991 ). In consumer behaviour, marketing, information systems, psychology, etc., prior research has demonstrated that attitude is a crucial predictor of intention. The following theory could be advanced based on the preceding considerations:

H3: An attitude positively affects the individual ’ s entrepreneurial intention toward entrepreneurship

Subjective norm and entrepreneurial intention

By bringing together the individual or friends about positive or negative judgement, group members represent some subjective norms with others, such as relatives, colleagues, and others, who may impact the choice to launch a business by that individual in the issue. The subjective norm highlights that favourable feedback from an individual in their close group may reinforce their entrepreneurial spirit. The opposite may be true if the review is negative (Bazan et al., 2019 ; Anwar & Saleem, 2019 ). According to the literature, women’s subjective norms for entrepreneurship are higher than men’s. This leads us to propose the following solution.

H4: Subjective norms directly affect the entrepreneurial intention

Entrepreneurial behaviour and innovation

According to Gurol and Atsan (2006), the literature on entrepreneurship significantly emphasises innovation. Business owners are referred to as pioneers in almost every piece of writing ever written about entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs can put their original ideas to use to build their companies through a process known as innovation, a specific tool. The Hypothesis that entrepreneurs are more digitally savvy and innovative in the craft business than non-entrepreneurs has been substantiated by several studies that used empirical evidence to test the Hypothesis (Laudano et al., 2018a ; Anggadwita & Dhewanto, 2015 ). As a direct consequence of this, the following theory is put forward:

H5. Their innovativeness positively influences individuals’ entrepreneurial behaviour in the craft industry .

Entrepreneurial behaviour based on anticipated social support

Anticipated social support is defined as how entrepreneurial behaviour and everyday society may help individuals to fulfil their social mission (Xiongfei et al., 2019 ). It creates a sense of acceptance that they are cared for and respected by society and thus influences an individual’s behaviour successful entrepreneur in the craft industry (Anggadwita & Dhewanto, 2015 ). Based on the following considerations, the developed Hypothesis might be as follows:

H6: Anticipated social support affects an individual’s entrepreneurial behaviour positively .

Entrepreneurial behaviour and anticipated behavioural control

According to Cooke and Sheeran ( 2004 ), an individual’s self-efficacy or ability to do a particular activity is an example of expected behavioural control. According to Malebana ( 2014 ), a person’s behaviour can be impacted not only by the person but also by external control forces like opportunity, resource availability, and particular abilities. It is a way of thinking about whether or not any factors can aid or impede an individual from carrying out a specific action. Based on this information, the following Hypothesis may be made as a consequence:

H7: Individuals’ entrepreneurial behaviour is positively influenced by their perception of behavioural control .

Entrepreneurial desire and entrepreneurial action

There has not been much empirical research that supports the individual decision and impact of entrepreneurial goals to start a business (Krueger, 1993 ). However, studies that have looked into this association have found it significant. This study also contends women’s stronger intention is to start a new business, and his type of desire is reflected in their activity. As a result, the following theory could be proposed:

H8. Entrepreneurial intent promotes entrepreneurial conduct positively .

The objective of the study

The main objective of this study is to compare the performance of the TPB, EEM and the contextual elements employed in this study to those found in the entrepreneurship literature under varying conditions to conclude the efficacy of the proposed model. To study the evaluation of factors that affect Indian female entrepreneurship.

Research methodology

Sample and data.

The information was acquired from female students enrolled in various professional business and entrepreneurial courses at the diploma, undergraduate, and postgraduate levels at some Indian state and private universities. We gathered the data from students studying business and entrepreneurship-related subjects in Indian universities. The total numbers of item were 36. For this, we applied convenience sampling during data collection. The items in the questionnaire were both types (open-ended as well as closed-ended). There has been used 7 points Likert scale that is strongly agreed to disagree (1–7 points) strongly.

Furthermore, the questionnaire included nine questions on respondents’ demographic characteristics. Online questionnaires were forwarded through Google Form Link among students and professionals. The sampling area and target area were reputed Indian national universities, IITs, and NITs that MBA and entrepreneurship programmes offer. Items of the questionnaire are given in Table 1 .

The respondents were mainly higher education students and young professionals in the handicraft sectors. 631 questionnaires were distributed to students from various cohorts, and 482 responses were received. It was observed that 53 such questionnaires were filled out using the same option for every question and served as the foundation for data analysis.

Foundation of construct

The existing scale inherited from previous studies was used to operationalise the constructs and collect data in this study. Nine constructs were operationalized to analyse and measure the aggregated components, and their respective measures were applied. TPB core constructs such as attitude, subjective norms, and anticipated behavioural control was employed, whereas EEM essential constructs such as anticipated feasibility and inclination were used. In addition, we used crucial mediating and dependent factors from TPB, such as entrepreneurial intention and conducted (Linan, 2008 ). Along with these integrated models, we examined the effects of additional variables on entrepreneurial activity, such as innovativeness and anticipated social support. We did, however, derive the measures for entrepreneurial intention from the works of (Linan, 2008 ; Krueger, 1993 ) because they were already stated precisely in the context of the entrepreneurship literature. The items for the TPB’s core constructs, such as attitude, anticipated behavioural control, and subjective norm, along with some dependent variables (i.e., entrepreneurial intention and entrepreneurial behaviour), were derived (Alferaih, 2017 ). In contrast, the items for the EEM, including anticipated feasibility and anticipated inclination, were derived (Hair et al., 2010 ).

Respondents’ demographic characteristics

As previously stated, 430 valid responses were gathered for the final analysis, consisting of all female students with entrepreneurial knowledge and experience. In terms of age, between 20 to 25 years (243, 56.64%), 18 and 20 years (i.e., 90, 20.98%), 25–30 years (i.e., 49, 11.42%), and 30 years and over (i.e., 47, 10.96%). In terms of Education, the majority of respondents (359, 83.68%) were pursuing an undergraduate degree, followed by a postgraduate degree (58, 13.52%), and the least number of respondents (12, 2.80%) were pursuing a diploma degree. Regarding professional Education, the vast majority (i.e., 284, 66.2%) were enrolled in business and management-associated courses, while the remaining 145 (i.e., 33.80%) were enrolled in entrepreneurship-related specialised courses. For short demographic information, please follow Table 2 .

Statistical descriptions

The following section will investigate the many descriptive statistics indicators the suggested study model’s constructions utilise. The results of this study’s model are presented in Table 3 , along with Cronbach’s alpha, mean, average variance extracted standard deviation, composite reliability, and values for each construct. On a Likert scale ranging from one to seven, the fact that the mean value for any given construction is more than five suggests that respondents provided favourable feedback about the construct-related questions. The relatively lower values for a standard deviation for items and aggregated constructs around an average of 1.25 also show that responses did not vary much while responding to questions concerning these constructs. This is implied by the fact that the values for the standard deviation were relatively close together. The majority of them were found to have concurrent characteristics. To determine all nine consistent components, Cronbach’s alpha was applied to the data. According to Podsakoff et al. ( 2012 ), using these figures allowed for an evaluation of the dependability of a scale, which indicates the inner coherence of assessing the same notion. It was discovered that the alpha values for all of these constructs were higher than the minimum criterion of 0.70, indicating that the internal consistency of measuring all items for each construct was adequate (Hair et al., 2010 ; Kock et al., 2021 ). These findings can be seen in Table 3 down below.

Data analysis and result

The results are given through data analysis using AMOS 25.0, first assessing common method bias and normality, then assessing the model’s performance using the confirmatory factor analysis (also called measurement model) and structural equation model.

Common method bias and assessment of normality

Kurtosis values and Skewness were all found within the range of 2 for each, which is a permitted measurement item of all the constructs, confirming the normal distribution of the data utilised for analysis. Standard method bias can occur when the exact response mechanism collects data for dependent and independent variables (Fornell & Larcker, 1981 ; Anderson & Gerbing, 1988 ). This is due to collecting data from the same respondent group for dependent independent variables. It is fair to analyse its bias using the standard method bias approach (Neumeyer et al., 2019 ; Henseler et al., 2015 ). We employed Harman’s single-factor test to address this issue. Common method bias may appear in data if all critical constructs in one component account for more than 50% of the variance. The loading of all potential elements on a single-factor resulted in an overall variance of 29.34%, which is less than the 50% mark projected. As a result, the instrument revealed no bias indicators in the dataset.

Measurement model

Confirmatory factor analysis or measurement model tests the scales’ discriminant and convergent validity (CFA). The CFA demonstrates that all of the selected items loaded favourably (i.e., factor loading values for all constituent construct items were found to be greater than the minimum threshold value of 0.50) on relevant constructs, giving conclusive empirical evidence of their validity. Cronbach’s alpha and the average extracted (AVE) values assess the variation, and the factor loadings explain on their unpredictable (random) measurement errors (Henseler et al., 2015 ) and (Bagozzi, Yi, 1988 ) were discovered to be in the range of 0.540–0.845, and substantially more significant than expected. An appropriate range of validity for all constructs included in data analysis is indicated by an AVE estimate of 0.50. Similarly, the extracted average variance (AVE) values assess the variation explained by the latent variables on their random measurement errors via the proposed study model. For coding and Discriminant validity, please see Table 4 .

Table 4 shows the procedures for establishing discriminant validity in which fidelity level (FL) and critical ratio (CR) along with AVEs has been given, as described by (Chin & Todd, 1995 ). The standard value of AVEs is .50.Potential constructions’ correlation values, which are included across the diagonals of the correlation table (see Table 4 ), need to be lower than the square root of their AVEs to meet the criteria for discriminant validity. Table 4 shows the results of a discriminant validity analysis, which shows that no two constructs correlated more significantly than the bolded square root of the AVEs. Table 3 shows a significant relationship between mindset and entrepreneurial actions ( r  = 0.723). This is less than the square root of the AVEs for AT and EB (respectively, 0.806 and 0.888). Table 5 shows that all of the pairs of variables have passed this test. Hence the discriminant validity requirements for all of the scales have been satisfied.

The criterion has recently been criticised for failing to reliably identify the lack of discriminant validity in frequent research contexts (Browne & Cudeck, 1993 ). Based on this criticism, the authors proposed an alternative methodology based on a multi-training multi-method matrix to investigate the Heterotrait-Monotrait (HTMT) correlation ratio, also famous for the name of discriminant validity. Roy et al. ( 2017 ) went on to demonstrate the superior performance of this strategy. Table 4 displays the results of our investigation into the discriminant validity of the various elements using our novel HTMT method. Tripathi & Singh ( 2017 ) and Roay et al. ( 2017 ) both state that there is a concern with discriminant validity if the HTMT value is more than 0.85 (as criteria) or 0.90 (as a statistical test). Table 6 below displays HTMT or discriminant validity values; none fall outside that range. Therefore, it proves the discriminant validity of all constructs.

The approximation error is typically quantified using (RMSEA). Critical fit indices (degree of freedom and Chi-square/(DF/2)), adjusted goodness of fit index (AGFI), the goodness of fit index (GFI), and comparative fit index (CFI) were used to assess the model’s ability to explain the data. The CFI is considered because it has the highest index fit (Anderson & Gerbing, 1988 ), as in Table 7 . RMSEA analyses the differences between the degrees of freedom. The critical value of AGFI is 0.82, while the critical value of CFI is 0.89 (Chin & Todd, 1995 ). For the same reason, the root means square error of approximation (RMSEA) value of 0.06 or below matches the observed data and the postulated model (Browne & Cudeck, 1993 ). Table 6 displays the fit indices for the measurement model, all of which are acceptable (i.e., GFI = 0.9362/DF = 1.49, AGFI = 0.847, CFI = 0.956, RMSEA = 0.035) (Basaffar et al., 2018 ).

Structural model

The confirmation of the structural model’s and measurement model performance is evaluated in the following paragraph. The structural model’s fit indices are supplied for this purpose. Table 7 summarises the structural model’s important fit indices. For instance, along with a p -value less than 0.001, the Chi-square by degree of freedom (2/DF) value was determined to be 1652.357/864 = 1.912. This is because the 2/DF value is good within the [1–3] range suggested by Chin & Todd ( 1995 ).

Furthermore, other fit indices, such as the AGFI, GFI, and CFI, were discovered to be 0.912, 0.815, and 0.939, respectively. These numbers were likewise discovered to be significantly higher than the projected ideal threshold values (Chin & Todd, 1995 ). Finally, with a 0.036 value, the root means square error of approximation (RMSEA) is lower than the suggested value of 0.06. These fit index values show that the proposed structural model described in Table 8 correctly fits the data.

Table 8 has been used to validate the proposed model. Table 8 shows eight direct correlations between nine constructs, all of which were shown to be significant at varying levels of p at 0.05, 0.01, and 0.001. The path coefficient values of the paths influencing entrepreneurial intention included achievability’s indirect repercussions (AF) (=0.161, p  = 0.010), anticipated inclination (AI) (=0.271, p  = 0.001), entrepreneurial attitude (EAT) ( b  = 0.272, p  < 0.001) and subjective norm (SN) ( b  = 0.14, p  = 0.011), whereas Innovativeness and digitalization (ID) ( b  = 0.161, p  = 0.005), Anticipated social support (ASS) ( b  = 0.245, p  < 0.001), Anticipated control behavior (ACB) ( b  = 0.224, p  < 0.001), as well as Entreprenurial inclination (EI) ( b  = 0.436, p  < 0.001) on Entreprenurial behaviour (EB) was found significant. For path coefficient and hypothesis testing, please see Table 9 .

Validated research model

In Fig. 2 , there is no substitute model validated by the empirical studies or originating studies on people’s intention to start a business that can compare to the 74% variance reported by the research model. (Armuña et al., 2020 ). The model showed a reasonable variance of 46% and that predicted behavioural controls affect innovation, entrepreneurial behaviour, entrepreneurial intention and anticipated social support. The model explained relatively higher variances in entrepreneurial intention and entrepreneurial behaviour for the dataset, suggesting that it is a better alternative to TPB, EEM, and integrated TPB-EEM models for assessing female entrepreneurs’ intentions and behaviours. Achievability’s indirect repercussions (AF) (=0.042, p  = 0.005), anticipated inclination (AI) (=0.070, p  = 0.001), entrepreneurial attitude (EAT) (=0.071, p  = 0.004), and subjective norm (SN) (=0.040, p  = 0.023) on entrepreneurial behaviour were also found to be significant, indicating that all of these antecedents have significant indirect effects on entrepreneurial behaviour.

Figure 2 represents the validated research model for testing of hypothesis. This model has described the higher variance in entrepreneurial behaviours and entrepreneurial intentions. Value of each variable that affects entrepreneurial behaviour and entrepreneurial intentions. Anticipated feasibility indirect repercussions (AF) (=0.042, p  = 0.005), anticipated inclination (AI) (=0.070, p  = 0.001), entrepreneurial attitude (EAT) (=0.071, p  = 0.004), and subjective norm (SN) (=0.040, p  = 0.023) on entrepreneurial behaviour were also found to be significant, indicating that all of these antecedents have significant indirect effects on entrepreneurial behaviour.

This study constructed a comprehensive TPB-EEM-based extended model. The proposed model not only strikes a middle ground between TPB and EEM, but also includes relevant constructs like innovativeness and digitalisation and anticipated social support to create a novel and straightforward method. It emphasises evaluating the entrepreneurial intentions and actions of Indian female craft entrepreneurs (Kumar et al., 2022 ; Esfandiar et al., 2019 ; Fini et al., 2012 ). Female students at India’s premier public university, the National Institute of Importance, Alomar ( 2023 ), found support for the direct linkages postulated in the proposed model. This study investigates how entrepreneurial intents, subjective norms, and attitudes can stimulate further entrepreneurial endeavours. This research did not provide support for the notion that individual values and beliefs have a favourable effect on entrepreneurial goals and subsequent actions. The most significant effect of handicraft entrepreneurs’ mindsets on their business plans is positive in nature and direction. However, neither objective nor subjective norms were significant predictors of entrepreneurial intent.

Four hypothesised factors (attitude, subjective norm, anticipated practicality, and anticipated inclination) were found to influence female students’ intentions to establish a business in the validated research model. In contrast, the hypothesised and supported influence of the other four antecedents on entrepreneurial intentions were anticipated behavioural control, innovativeness and digitalisation, anticipated social support, and entrepreneurial ambition (Ayinaddis, 2023 ; Alomar, 2023 ). Previous studies have found an association between individuals’ subjective norms, attitudes, and intentions regarding entrepreneurship and the likelihood that they will engage in social entrepreneurship. The current study demonstrated only a robust positive association between attitudes and expected propensity to establish a handicraft business, contrasting the authors’ conclusions. Different cultural contexts may account for the divergent findings, as may the fact that the current study specifically focussed on students already engaged in entrepreneurial activity, as opposed to the previous studies, which did not undertake the case as discussed. The participants in the studies by Fenech et al. ( 2019 ); Utami ( 2017 ); Vinothkumar, Subramanian ( 2016 ); Yap et al. ( 2013 ) were not business owners, but they were professionals and students. This is why more studies must be conducted on people already taking the entrepreneurial plunge. The findings of this study could be viewed as evidence that various factors influence the aspirations of budding and established business owners. A larger-scale, comparative investigation is needed to further investigate this interpretation. While factors like self-efficacy and subjective norms have been shown to have a favourable effect on aspiring entrepreneurs in the early phases of the entrepreneurial process (Amofah & Saladrigues, 2022 ; Alene, 2020 ; Cavazos-Arroyo et al., 2017 ), attitudes may play a more pivotal role later on.

Similarly, Yap et al. ( 2013 ), who adapts the Fishbein-Ajzen model, find that entrepreneurial attitudes significantly impact intention within the Theory of Planned Behaviour. Authors argue that attitude formation and change are essential subjects in economics, marketing, and social psychology. According to Yap et al. ( 2013 ), one’s attitude determines future actions.

Even though many other studies by Hyland-Wood et al. ( 2021 ), Kamberidou ( 2020 ) have been conducted to comprehend people’s entrepreneurial intention and behaviour when authors applied the fundamental models of TPB, EEM, and their combination, as well as their further extensions to different situations and relevant factors, to our knowledge, no other study has ever explicitly focused on the female entrepreneur.

Hypothesis H1 was supported (=0.163, p  = 0.010), suggesting that students’ expectations of the business’s feasibility significantly impact whether or not they choose to launch a start-up. As this study shows, female students who believe in their ability to become entrepreneurs are more likely to have optimistic expectations about the likelihood of their venture’s success. They can think for themselves about starting a business because of the Education and experience they have gained. Previous studies have also indicated a correlation between a high feasibility level and substantial business potential. The majority of Indian and Arabian women still lack self-confidence. They have not even considered how successful they will become by taking root of building their careers by starting their businesses, even if their financial ability is vital. This suggests that despite a weaker significance level on the anticipated feasibility of entrepreneurial intention, Indian and Arabian women face various restrictions deeply ingrained in their culture.

Similarly, Hypothesis H2 (=0.271, p  = 0.001) was significant, implying a positive association between anticipated and entrepreneurial inclination. This substantially higher route coefficient suggests that female students’ desire to start a new firm led to positive intent. This appears self-evident since the increased inclination gives them the desire to overcome obstacles to design successful solutions. The fact that attitude substantially impacts entrepreneurial intention (H3: =0.272, p  = 0.001) demonstrates that attitude influences their plans to start a firm. Higher entrepreneurship education may also contribute to female students’ improved attitudes. Given the higher risks of beginning a business, female students’ optimism may inspire them to launch new ventures (Bullough et al., 2022 ). Similarly, Hypothesis H4 (=0.154, p  = 0.012) was significant, indicating a positive association between subjective norm and entrepreneurial inclination.

The relevance of this link implies that family, relatives, and friends influence female students’ intentions to start their enterprises and so on. In other words, the positive impression of the reference group may encourage female students to start a business (Wu et al., 2019 ).

It appears that young female college students’ motivation to invest time, money, and effort into starting a new business is significantly influenced by innovativeness and digitalisation (i.e., Hypothesis H5: =0.158, p  = 0.005). Female students’ innovative ideas for starting businesses will directly influence how they want to run their businesses, suggesting that innovativeness significantly influences entrepreneurial behaviour among college students. Female students may need a lot of social support to choose to engage in certain conduct, as expected social support has a significant impact (=0.245, p  = 0.001) on entrepreneurial behaviour (Hypothesis H6). Consistent with earlier research, we find that the expectancy of behavioural control significantly impacts entrepreneurial behaviour (=0.224, p  = 0.001). It seems that having a positive attitude toward beginning a business and a solid understanding of ABC are necessary for success. Finally, the entrepreneurial intention has a significant effect on female students’ actions (=0.436, p  = 0.001), revealing whether or not they are serious, determined, and have a firm intention to start a business, which will translate into a substantial commitment to investing money, time, and effort to make it successful.

Implications and limitations

This section comprises theoretical contribution, research implication, and limitations and future scope of research.

Theoretical contribution

This study has made numerous theoretical advances while working on this research to understand the elements influencing and enhancing the capacity of female craft entrepreneurs’ goals and behaviour in India. First, despite women being at the forefront of economic development in emerging nations and Southeast Asian countries, there have been few empirical studies on female entrepreneurship in general and in India (Yadav et al., 2022a ). As a result, the endeavour to conduct this type of empirical research in the setting of India with Gulf countries is an important contribution to the literature on handicraft entrepreneurship. Second, to our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive literature review of its kind, evaluating all previous studies on female entrepreneurship to ascertain the field’s current state and identify areas where more investigation is needed. Third, the proposed model for this research provides a unique and novel amalgamation of the TPB and the EEM’s core constructs and incorporates external constructs such as innovativeness, digital entrepreneurship, and anticipated social support. The previous research proposed in the handmade items set a new variety of research models primarily based on the TPB, the EEM, or a combination of both. It has far-reaching effects on how women in India’s craft industry forge their paths and form their opinions as business owners. Finally, the model’s balance and parsimony are demonstrated by the fact that 74% and 46% of the variances in entrepreneurial intention and behaviour are explained, respectively (Amofah & Saladrigues, 2022 ).

Implications of the research

This study will support the different researchers to do new innovative research in small industries and the handicraft sector and should focus on geographical research. Because environmental condition from place to place is different, researchers and other related organisations involved in research will explore their ideas from learning this study to develop a new concept.

Managerial and policy implication

This study’s findings will also support organisation managers who decide on the organisation’s development and set up new entrepreneurial businesses. This will also motivate familiar people to open start-ups for handicraft products. This will also support the government and policymakers prepare policies according to the market’s demand. It will augment Policymakers with crucial narratives to move beyond measures to solve some fundamental issues of handmade female entrepreneurship in India. To encourage women to take the entrepreneurial root and start their businesses rather than relying on government jobs, the government could promote hands-on instruction in some professional courses on small and unorganised businesses and entrepreneurship. This relatively decisive factor enhances and affects attitudes on handicraft entrepreneurial intention and behaviours. As a result, the government can provide more and better opportunities for female students, while the small-scale industries and private sectors can hire fewer people overall. We suggest colleges and universities should do more to prepare their students for the real-world by including lectures from successful business people and industry leaders in their curricula.

Social and financial implications

A significant influence of subjective norms on handicraft entrepreneurial intention suggests that female students need to be motivated personally by their family, neighbours, co-workers, and friends. This will motivate the local, rural and semi-skilled people to do their businesses, provide local job opportunities, reform the financial condition of their families, and increase India’s GDP. In contrast, positive word-of-mouth from a successful female entrepreneur in the region can also significantly boost female students’ capabilities, skills, digital technological awareness, knowledge, and confidence. It could show them how to start their own handmade business.

Similarly, the positive impact of ABC on entrepreneurial activity in the handicraft industry implies that governments and policymakers should consider providing appropriate monetary assistance. This assistance may be in the form of subsidies, easy loans for women owners, places for trade fairs (Hunnar hat, saras fair, craft fairs, craft Hackathon) and open common facility centres, handicraft parks, handicraft museums, handicraft design bank, unique TV channel for craft promotions, to inspire business owners. As part of the initiative, the government may provide internships to female students in various fields (including business, Education, healthcare, and others) to help them gain experience and confidence in leveraging their skills to create new opportunities. Expected inclination has a moderate and positive effect on entrepreneurial intention, suggesting that female students’ interest in starting a business could be sustained if educational institutions provided some of the most appealing and practical programmes on business and entrepreneurship to students. These programmes could include seminars and practical exercises to help alleviate students’ reluctance to consider entrepreneurship.

Limitations and future scope of research

Like other research, this one has some caveats. The first part of this research looks at how specific factors affect the aspirations and actions of female handicraft entrepreneurs. Further caution is warranted when extrapolating this study’s results to predominantly male or female populations. Secondly, information for this study was collected from female students at several Indian universities using a convenience sample. To better understand the perspective of female students taking a variety of business courses at varying levels, future research could collect data from students at universities outside the country to establish a representative sample. Finally, this research uses a cross-sectional design to gather information. It would be interesting to see if students’ interest in entrepreneurship shifts between the time they begin their professional Education and the time they are about to graduate. Finally, the proposed research model in this study did not incorporate any moderating variables. Some of these associations may be examined in greater depth in future studies by controlling for factors including entrepreneurial Education, entrepreneurial competence, and previous entrepreneurial experience.

Conclusions

This study aspires to deepen our knowledge of the factors that motivate and inspire Indian college women and some working women to launch their businesses. Based on the theoretical foundations of two basic models (TPB and EEM), this study proposed and validated a research model using data collected from Indian universities. In addition to the TPB-EEM-based integrated model, two different characteristics were used: creativity and expected social support. Eight hypotheses were generated, all statistically significant regarding entrepreneurial goals and craft-related behaviour. This paper draws several theoretical and practical implications from the research, including novel and valuable additions to the existing knowledge on entrepreneurship, particularly in the handicraft sector. Implications for educational institutions; improved education programmes; and targeted support for women pursuing business and professional Education or recently graduated from university. Indian market is based on traditional demand and production routes, especially in the handicraft industry. So the attitude of customers and products vary because consumers purchase the products they see on TV and social media. The entrepreneurial intention is to change the criteria of making products according to the demand for craft product, which competes with machine-made products. Entrepreneurial behaviour is just like intention, and innovativeness attracts women entrepreneurs to demand total products. Finally, it has been seen that some factors affect female entrepreneurship behaviour in the handicraft industry.

Behaviour, attitude, and intention are factors affecting female entrepreneurship. We can see that Indian female students and professionals pursuing their degrees in different reputed institutions are attracted to do business. This study can allow researchers, policymakers and NGOs to motivate women in the handicraft industry. This industry has the potential to give employment to local people. The local job seekers can earn a livelihood by working in craft organisations. By having financial stability, they may become firm, and females can be better promoters of craft products at the global level. Their entrepreneurial intention may increase the working capacity of much weaker section and tribal ladies. This may transform the craft industry into a big-basket consortium. They can compete well with machine-made products, thus helping the nation’s economy and increasing employment opportunities through this industry.

Data availability

The datasets used in this study will be available upon request.

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Yadav, U.S., Tripathi, R., Tripathi, M.A. et al. Evaluation of factors affecting entrepreneurship: a case of Indian women in the handicraft industry. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 10 , 480 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-01882-w

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Evaluation of factors affecting women artisans as entrepreneurs in the handicraft sector: a study on financial, digital technology factors and developmental strategies about odop in uttar pradesh to boost economy.

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Journal of the Knowledge Economy (2024)

Digital and innovative entrepreneurship in the Indian handicraft sector after the COVID-19 pandemic: challenges and opportunities

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Retail Entrepreneurship Development In India: A Case Study Of Big Bazaar

2016, IOSR Journal of Business and Management (IOSR-JBM)

This study investigates the structure of the retail sector in India with special reference to Big Bazaar and its potential in stimulating entrepreneurial skills and knowledge. Study has found that India is dominated by huge unorganized retail sector. Now, even the organized sector is gradually increasing its share in retail sector. Big Bazaar is the largest retail brand in our country. It is employing the youth in thousands in different cities all around the country. It also pays taxes which is abundantly lacking in unorganized sector. After applying many matrices on Big Bazaar the study found that, it is at a growing stage. It is at a stage where it is increasing as well as diversifying its operations. It has launched many attracting schemes to catch customers at a large scale. Study also finds out that indeed the Big Bazaar is a biggest outlet in a country, but it has some limitations also. Abundantly boosting online stores are the biggest threat to retail sector entrepreneurship in India. Because, increasing purchases from online stores seem easier to customers rather than going to retail stores.

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Sustaining a startup is perhaps the most difficult phase for any entrepreneur. While everyone advocates entrepreneurship as a shortcut to mint money and get rich scheme, the uncertainty and constant pressure to perform is a huge responsibility even for the toughest of individuals. The team at StartupTalky decided to analyze some unsuccessful startups in India.

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3. Stayzilla

Once on the path to becoming the largest homestay network in India, Stayzilla is reminiscent of a riches-to-rags story. With around $33.5 million in funding and establishing itself in the hotel-rental segment, this brainchild of Yogendra Vasupal, Rupal Yogendra, and Sachit Singhi started crumbling after it failed to repay vendors. The troubles were then aggregated and in February 2017, Yogendra Vasupal officially announced the closure of Stayzilla's operations.

Reason for failure : Stayzilla was way ahead of its time when launched. People were not ready for such Hi-Fi technology. However, the company somehow managed some time on the funding it received. But when people started becoming familiar with online booking, new competitors emerged with better discounts and deals. Stayzilla was unable to provide the same due to the unavailability of funds. Additionally, legal disputes and a lack of focus on growing the business destroyed Stayzilla.

Inter-city travel has become a mainstream requirement— traveling 100 km or more every day is deemed as just another day to some. The reason may be anything: office location, excursion, meeting a friend, etc. These journeys can burn a hole in the pocket. Roder (earlier known as Insta Cabs) was founded by Abhishek Negi, Ashish Rajput, and Siddhant Matre in 2014 to ease inter-city rides. One of Roder's highlights was offering one-way rides at nearly half the market price.

Reason for failure : The inability to cope with customer acquisition costs and not keeping up with the user retention rates. Moreover, increased competition from experienced ventures like Ola and Uber added to Roder's woes. Having a bigger competitor that is more aggressively funded makes the entrepreneurs lose their zeal. And this is one of the major causes of entrepreneurial failure.

5. Turant Delivery

The B2B startup was an intra-city logistics provider that was launched in 2015 to bring a new flavor to the Indian logistics industry. The algorithm followed by Turant Delivery permitted it to offer services at a price as much as 15% less than what fellow competitors charged for the same trip (as per the endeavor’s claim).

Reason for failure : The company did not have the funds to sustain itself in the long run. A logistics service provider needs intensive cash flow to run. Hence, funding is essential for any logistics startup .

6. Finomena

Students are the new target audience when it comes to offering small loans. Acting on this, Finomena came out with an app that provided ‘EMI without cards’. The aim was to allow students to purchase mobile phones and other electronics on a loan. In March 2016, Finomena raised its seeding funding and then made quick strides before going down in 2018.

Reason for failure : Finomena is counted amongst those Indian startups that failed unexpectedly despite having enough funding. It was a fintech startup that focused on providing loans, a segment already dominated by established players before its entry. Fierce competition from rivals like ZestMoney was the major reason behind Finomena's failure. Also, burning cash where it was not needed was another cause. Before you launch your startup, check if the target segment has reached its saturation levels. Also, use your funding wisely!

MrNeeds was a grocery delivery startup founded by Hitashi Garg, Yogesh Garg, Ravi Wadhwa, and Ravi Verma. It provided a subscription-based grocery delivery service. People could easily pay for their subscriptions and receive their groceries on the set date. MrNeeds, a Delhi-based startup , did well with more than 10,000 deliveries in Noida alone.

Reason for failure : MrNeeds was a subscription-based startup. Hence, turnover might not have been that great given how frugal Indians usually' tend to be. So it is possible that the startup had a lack of funding to sustain itself. The entry of funded grocery delivery startups like Grofers and Big Basket can also be another reason for MrNeeds' failure.

8. CardBack

A fintech platform founded by Nidhi Gurnani and Nikhil Wason, CardBack lets credit and debit cardholders with multiple cards know which card provider would offer the best rewards and points on transactions. The venture was funded by famous angel investors such as Alok Mittal and Sunil Kalra and managed to raise $170k in five years.

Reason for failure : CardBack could not secure funds after 2014, and the number of multiple cardholders in India was less than what the fintech startup had expected. Hence, the main reason for CardBack's failure was its over-expectation of market growth. The plan to shift the headquarters to Singapore, where the multiple credit card culture abounds, also failed. The failure to move to Singapore was the final nail in the coffin for CardBack.

9. Overcart

Overcart was the first Indian fintech player to provide a platform for purchasing refurbished, overstock, and pre-owned items. It was founded in 2012. People could buy and sell their electronic devices on the website. Overcart received substantial angel investment; however, the company failed to capitalize on it.

Reason for failure : Overcart did not seem to be very focused on its business. Unsatisfactory services such as late delivery, poor quality of purchased items, and bad customer service led to customer rebuke, thereby causing Overcart to shut down in 2017.

10. RoomsTonite

Last-minute hotel bookings usually end up in a mess and utter disappointment. RoomsTonite was launched to deal with this issue. It received around $1.5 million in funding and ceased functioning by September 2017. The startup rose and crumbled within three years!

Reason for failure : Having strong rivals in the form of Makemytrip and OYO was one reason for RoomsTonite's failure. The credit crunch also added to RoomsTonite's woes. Facing a sudden reduction in the loan's availability is called a credit crunch. Roomstonite faced a credit crunch in 2016 which didn’t allow it to flourish.

11. Doodhwala

Founded in 2015, Doodhwala was a subscription-based platform that delivered milk and grocery items directly to the customer's doorstep. Founded by Ebrahim Akbari and Aakash Agarwal, Doodhwala claimed to complete about 30,000 deliveries in a day.

Reason for failure : According to experts, lack of funds and tough competition from the big shots like BigBasket, Milkbasket, and SuprDaily caused Doodhwala to shut down. It is a prime example of startups that failed in India that failed due to strong competitors.

Russsh was founded in 2012 by Bharat Ahirwar. Russsh offered both first-mile and last-mile on-demand delivery services to individuals and businesses. The company claimed to have a database of over 50,000 loyal clients and completed 500,000 transactions. However, on June 3rd, 2019, the company announced its closure.

Reason for failure : The major reason for Russsh's failure was the lack of funds. It was a self-funded startup and in the absence of enough funds, Russsh was unable to resist the intense competition from its rivals. Bharat Ahirwar also admitted that being a single-founder venture and the absence of a strong team were equally responsible for Russsh's shutdown.

Rakesh Yadav, Rahul Raj, and Aditya Naik founded Koinex in August 2017, and in no time the company established itself as India’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. With a user base of over 1 million, Koinex claimed to have a trading volume of over $3 billion and the successful execution of 20 million+ orders.

Reason for failure : Koinex suspended its services on 27th June 2019. The cryptocurrency trading business has seen many ups and downs in India and this instability affected Koinex. The founders stated the lack of a clear regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies in India to be a major deterrent that prevented them from running Koinex's operations smoothly.

14. DocTalk

Founded in 2016, by Krishna Chaitanya Aluru, Akshat Goenka, and Vamsee Chamakura, Doctalk connected doctors with patients. Through the Doctalk app, one could find good doctors in the vicinity and after just one in-person visit, the patient could connect to the doctor through the Doctalk app for further consultation and queries.

The patients had to pay a subscription fee, whereas the doctors were charged an initiation fee. In 2018, Doctalk pivoted to a new business model wherein it built an electronic medical record (EMR) solution to help doctors write digital prescriptions on customized prescription templates. The EMR business was launched under a new brand name 'Pulse' and was sold to the doctors as a tool that let them digitalize the entire consultation, and share the same with the patients.

Reason for failure: Doctalk's pivot from its initial business model into the electronic medical record solution (EMR) business was not successful; it is often cited as the cause of DocTalk's closure by company insiders.

15. LoanMeet

P2P lending platform LoanMeet was started in 2015 by Ritesh Singh and Sunil Kumar to help small businesses grow through ultra-short-term loans (for 15, 20, or 30 days) for buying inventories. LoanMart's services included B2B marketplace financing, working capital financing, cash credit line, and channel financing in the range of Rs 5,000 to 5 lakh for a period of 15 days to 9 months. The company claimed to have an average lending ticket size of Rs 50,000 at around an 18% interest rate.

Reason for failure: LoanMeet raised funding from Chinese investors Cao Yibin and Huang Wei in 2017 but failed to secure any funding after that. LoanMart's shutdown is attributed to the lack of funds and tough competition from players like Capital Float, Loan Frame, and Happy Loan.

16. Houseparty

Houseparty was a social media and video chat application that was founded in 2016 by Ben Rubin, Sima Sistani, Itai Danino, and Scott Ahn. The app gained popularity for its unique feature that allowed users to connect with friends in group video calls and play games together in real time.

Reasons for failure : Houseparty’s closure was influenced by multiple factors, including the decline of the pandemic, insufficient funding, and Epic Games' prioritization of other areas.

17. Dark Sky

Dark Sky was a weather forecasting app that provided hyperlocal weather information and accurate forecasts to users. It was founded in 2011 by Adam Grossman and Jack Turner. Dark Sky gained popularity for its user-friendly interface and precise weather predictions, which were based on real-time data and advanced algorithms.

Reasons for failure: Sky announced that it had been acquired by Apple and would be discontinued on other platforms, including Android. The acquisition by Apple led to the dissolution of Dark Sky as an independent entity, and its features were integrated into Apple's own weather services.

Amit Sharma and Apoorva Jois founded the startup, which had secured a total funding of $56.4 Mn from multiple rounds since its inception. The startup had received backing from prominent investors, including Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani and Fung Investments.

Reasons for failure   In  August, the B2B e-commerce startup operated by 10i Commerce Services had to close its operations and file for bankruptcy. In a filing with the Registrar of Companies (RoC), the startup informed its board that it faced challenges in generating sufficient cash flow or raising new capital through the sale of stakes.

19. Lido Learning

Lido Learning was a Mumbai-based Indian educational technology (EdTech) startup that focuses on providing online education. February 2022, Lido Learning made headlines as the first tech startup to lay off more than 150 employees, using the term "pink-slipped," which raised concerns about the company's employment practices.

Reasons for failure Lido Learning faced a concerning situation when payments to their teachers and employees were not being adequately taken care of .

20. Amazon Food, Distribution

In May 2020, Amazon Food entered the competitive Indian food delivery market. However, after trying it out for more than two and half years, Amazon decided to shut down its food delivery platform, which was being piloted in Bengaluru, India, by 29 December 2022.

Reasons for failure Amazon Food failed in India due to stiff competition from established players like Zomato and Swiggy, localization challenges in catering to diverse culinary preferences, operational complexities in building a reliable network of restaurants and delivery partners, and broader cost-cutting measures undertaken by Amazon in a challenging economic environment.

List Of Other Failed Startups In India

Main Reasons why Startups Fail in India

The above-mentioned examples shed light on major issues that are responsible for the failure of nearly 90% of the emerging startups in India:

• Lack of funds: On close observation, it is evident that insufficient funding or the lack of it caused most of the startups to shut down.
• Highly anticipated model, not in sync with the nature and lifestyle of the Indian population: Some of the startups listed above failed because their highly anticipated models were not appropriate for Indians. Startups should either wait for the right time or educate their future consumers about their technology in advance. Also, the company should pivot only after a thorough market study.
• Poor customer service and sub-par quality of the products offered: Be it an online startup or a brick-and-mortar store, customer service is of utmost importance. Some startups compromise on customer service and the quality of their products; the compromise always results in the closure of business.
• Lack of focus and legal disputes: It is imperative for any startup to focus on building a solid foundation and then growing it further. Entrepreneurs should also focus on the legalities which may cause disruptions in the future. What if you ignore these two factors? You cease to operate like Stayzilla.

You can read more about reasons for startups failures here .

How to Bounce back from your Startup's Failure

Panic doesn’t help in failure; relaxation and progressive thinking will prove to be useful. Successful people have seen failures and have overcome all challenges.

Here are some tips to bounce back from your startup's failure:

Share Your Feelings

Don’t think that life ends after a failure. Don’t spend time criticizing yourself or anyone else, but feel proud of the takeaways from that failure. Keep in touch with friends, family, and relatives to stay calm and relaxed in times of failure. Find a mentor or a group of experienced people. Learn from them. Seek guidance and mental support from mentors and entrepreneurs who have seen both success and failure.

Find Different Sources Of Income To Recover Your Loss

Failures will lead to financial difficulties. So work on expanding your income stream. Contact mentors and entrepreneurs for suggestions on income generation. Do not get depressed because money is meant to come and go. Calculate how long your savings will last and plan accordingly. It will be great if you already have a secondary source of income. If not, spend some time creating a source of income through freelancing or consulting.

Prepare And Plan With Consciousness

A lot of lessons are learned after hard times. Use these lessons to prepare and prioritize. Make a survival plan. Startup founders are very comfortable with planning and execution. Appoint suitable founders and workers to assist you. Hard work always pays off, so work until you achieve success. If your startup fails, create an excel sheet, and write down the skills in one column and the potential income from those skills in the second column. By doing this simple exercise, one will get some clarity on how to keep the business running for a few more months.

Wait For The Right Time To Get The Right Opportunities

Don’t take any important decision at the time of failure because the mind is depressed at such a time. Wait and then plan for the future. Take whatever time is required to make up your mind but once the thought process is in place, do not go back to thinking about the failure. Great opportunities do not come frequently. So wait for the right moment. It is better to wait for several months for the right kind of work than to get stuck on the wrong assignment.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Be mindful of your actions after a bout of failure. The right attitude is important during stressful moments. Take the right action with the right attitude. Say no to poor opportunities. Work to the best of your abilities. Aim high and let your failures be the stepping stones to success.

Failure is not an end. It's the first step to success. Whether you are running a startup or are planning to launch one, note down the mistakes discussed in this post. Nothing hurts more than committing a mistake you were already aware of. If this case study on the failure of some promising Indian startups was useful to you, let us know in the comments.

How many startups fail in India?

According to a 2019 report, more than 5 million startups are founded every year. However, only 10% of those startups succeed and the rest break down.

What happens when startups fail?

The startup may gather outstanding accounts, take up loans to settle outstanding debts, sell resources for paying debts, and cater to the investors who funded the startup. Venture capitalists and other investors usually end up at a loss when a startup fails.

Why do 90% of startups fail or why do most Indian startups fail?

Here are some of the major reasons: 1. Lack of funds. 2. Highly anticipated model against the nature and lifestyle of the target audience. 3. Poor customer service and low-quality products. 4. Lack of focus and legal disputes.

What is the hardest business to start?

Businesses that require huge funds to start off with are the hardest to start. Businesses pertaining to logistics,  restaurants, and travel agencies are deemed some of the most difficult businesses to start.

What is the safest business to start?

Businesses that require low investment are the safest. Things that can be done entirely from the comfort of your home are the easiest. Some examples are logo designing, digital marketing, website building, online tutoring, virtual assistance, and so on.

Am I too old to start a business?

There is no age limit for starting a startup. You can be 50 and have a unique idea that might take off in the market.

Must have tools for startups - Recommended by StartupTalky

• Convert Visitors into Leads- SeizeLead
• Manage your business smoothly- Google Workspace
• International Money transfer- XE Money Transfer

The Government Backing Foreign Investment in India by Forming Right Policies and Initiatives

There have been several initiatives by the government aimed at increasing investment and attracting more manufacturing to the nation. To facilitate the country's overall industrial growth, the Indian government intervenes with suitable policies via the Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) and other Central Ministries/

Recognized Startups Have Directly Generated 15.53 Lakh Job Opportunities

On January 16, 2016, the Startup India initiative was launched by the government with the goal of creating a strong environment that could support innovative startups and attract investments to the startup ecosystem in India. Entities are acknowledged as "startups" under the Startup India initiative by the Department

Niyo Expands Into New Verticals: Flight Booking and Visa Application

To provide consumers with end-to-end travel solutions through its app, neobanking startup Niyo Solutions has expanded into the flight booking and visa application categories. An in-house airline booking platform has been established by the Bengaluru-based fintech business. It offers seamless zero-fee local and international ticket booking services. The app also

Top Coffee Shop Franchises in India

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By Megha Rajagopalan Megha Rajagopalan reported from villages across Maharashtra, India, and from London, the home of the sugar industry’s standards body. Bags of sugar that leave the Dalmia Bharat Sugar mill in the western Indian city of Kolhapur come with an industry guarantee: It was harvested humanely, in fields free of child labor, debt bondage and abuse. None of that is true. The mill is certified by a group called Bonsucro, which sets the industry standard for sugar production. Brands including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Unilever and General Mills use the Bonsucro name to reassure customers that their supply chains demonstrate “ respect for human rights ,” even in places where abuses are widespread, like the region around the Dalmia mill. But a New York Times investigation found that Bonsucro’s inspections were all but guaranteed not to find problems. Internal documents and interviews with sugar mill executives, experts and Bonsucro contractors show that mills retain tremendous control over what auditors see and whom they can talk to. The audits are carried out hurriedly — from the mill to the farms in a matter of days — and the details are kept secret, which prevents public second-guessing. Even the auditor who said she inspected the Dalmia mill said turning up problems was extremely rare. “I’ve been auditing for the last two years, and I have not found any violations,” said Swapnali Hirve, who said she also inspected a mill owned by NSL Sugars. Both mills are in the state of Maharashtra. But women who cut sugar cane that ends up in these mills work in brutal conditions. In interviews, they told us that they were pushed into underage marriages so that they could cut sugar with their husbands. They were locked into years of debt by sugar mill contractors. Some, like thousands of other working-age women in this region, said they felt pressured to get unneeded hysterectomies to resolve common ailments like painful periods and keep working in the fields. We are having trouble retrieving the article content. Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber?  Log in . Want all of The Times?  Subscribe . Why did Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina resign and where is she now? Medium Text HASINA RESIGNS AND FLIES TO INDIA Bangladesh president dissolves parliament, calls for hasina to step down, why did protesters want hasina's resignation, what did hasina say about the protests, what triggered the job-quota protests, flagging economy, unemployment, hasina won january election. Sign up here. Reporting by Sudipto Ganguly; Editing by Angus MacSwan Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. , opens new tab Bangladesh awaits installation of interim government led by Muhammad Yunus Bangladesh is set to get a new, interim government headed by Nobel Peace Prize-winning economist Muhammad Yunus on Thursday, after weeks of tumultuous student protests forced Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to resign and flee to India. 395 IMAGES (PDF) Women Entrepreneurship in India: An Insight into Problems (PDF) Critical Review of Academic Entrepreneurship in India Social Entrepreneurship in India by Madhukar Shukla [PDF] Women Entrepreneurship in India: A Case Study Of Jaishree Kabra (PDF) Rural Entrepreneurship in India: Challenge and Problems (PDF) RURAL WOMEN ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN INDIA: CHALLENGES, OPPORTUNITIES VIDEO Entrepreneurial Development In India Growth of entrepreneurship in India in Hindi and simple language WHY AMAZON CLOSING THEIR BUSINESSES?#shorts #youtubeshorts Market Feasibility Study यह 4 बिज़नेस आपको बहुत अमीर बना सकते है || 4 Business कभी बंद नहीं होंगे The Kith and TAG HEUER Collection That Took F1 by Storm COMMENTS Top 10 Case Studies on Entrepreneurship In India With a burgeoning economy and a dynamic ecosystem, the country has produced a plethora of successful entrepreneurs and startups. In this article, we delve into the top 10 case studies on entrepreneurship in India, each offering unique insights, lessons, and inspiration for aspiring business leaders. Sustainable Entrepreneurship in India: A Comparative Case Study of This comparative case study method uses primary research, literature review and the evaluation of secondary sources to bring more depth to the cases. Primary data are collected through detailed interaction with the Indian founders and the key stakeholders to study the phenomenon of sustainable entrepreneurship. Top 10 Success Stories of Inspiring Indian Entrepreneurs [2024] We've collected the top 10 inspiring success stories of Indian entrepreneurs. These success stories will help you achieve your own entrepreneurial success. 100 Indian Startup Success Stories for the new age entrepreneur [2020 100 Inspiring Successful Startup Success Stories in India Each entrepreneur puts in his 110% effort to make their startup successful. Nevertheless, that's not the only factor in formulating the perfect recipe for Indian success stories. Successful startups in India are built on persistence, mentorships, disruptiveness & market requirements. Social entrepreneurship in India: how these frameworks and case studies With a blend of idealism and pragmatism, social entrepreneurs are bringing about broad transformation in India, as explained in this insightful new book. User innovation and entrepreneurship: case studies from rural India Innovation research has abundant literature on technologically advanced innovations and entrepreneurship. However, literature from a rural innovator and entrepreneur perspective is sparse. Therefore, we explore rural user innovation and entrepreneurship in a developing country, India. Using multiple case study research method, we study cases of five rural user innovations in detail. These ... Advancing the entrepreneurship ecosystem of India: A qualitative study Using social cognitive theory as a guide, this research seeks to explain the perceptions of current and aspiring Indian entrepreneurs. A multiple case study approach using 19 interviews with intellectuals provided qualitative data to conduct a cross-case analysis of the two groups with the qualitative analysis software NVivo. Rare insights from current and aspiring opportunity-motivated ... New Age Indian Entrepreneurs| Entrepreneurship Case Study Abstract: This case study is meant for discussing the evolution of entrepreneurship in India and the emergence and growth of the 'New Age Indian Entrepreneur'. Since time immemorial, the Indian business segment has been dominated by family-run businesses, with most of them hailing from traditional, money-lending or trading communities, known ... The Landscape of Social Entrepreneurship: A Case Study of India This paper discusses the growth of Social Entrepreneurship in India and its ever-growing role in the county's economy. India is yet a developing country, which needs many social entrepreneurs with progressive solutions to society's economic, social and... A Case Study On Exploring the Challenges of Women Entrepreneurs in This case study focuses on the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs in India due to lack of social support and stiff competition. It highlights the example of one real and recent Indian women entrepreneur, Megha Sharma was the founder and CEO of a company called "The Saffron Touch," who faced these challenges and overcame them through ... Case Study Entrepreneur India's case studies showcase real-world success stories of clients who leveraged our project reports to launch thriving businesses. Discover how our industry expertise empowers aspiring entrepreneurs, investors, and professionals to make informed investment decisions. PDF Unit 5 Successful Women Entrepreneurs Case study is drawn from Hina Shah, Creating Enabling Environment for Women's Entrepreneurship in India, Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), South and South West Ofice, Development Papers 1304, May 2013. Evaluation of factors affecting entrepreneurship: a case of ... So the primary purpose of this study is to discover the different constructs that influence women entrepreneurs in India as learner students or after completion of their degree, either skill ... PDF Entrepreneurship in India: A Case Study of Gaurang Shetty of RIIDL Entrepreneurship Education in India-Scope, challenges and Role of Bschools in Promoting Entrepreneurship Education. "International Journal of Engineering and Management Research (IJEMR)", 2(5), 5-14. PDF Caste and Entrepreneurship in India Case studies show that "the growth of Dalit entrepreneurship took off … during the 1980s and more vigorously after the 1990s" (Jodhka 2010: 43). India's post-1991 reforms are, thus, connected to rising economic inequalities in the first narrative, but they are also linked to the emergence of Dalit entrepreneurs in the second. PDF Rural Entrepreneurship in India- a Review Every nation's growth strongly depend on the different sectors and their development, to develop any sector, there is a need for innovation and business. In a developing country like India, largely with rural and semi- rural areas, there is a greater opportunity to grow and develop. Hence, rural entrepreneurship is an essential and the paper reviewed the papers of different authors about the ... Social Entrepreneurship: A Few Case Study A case study approach was adopted to understand the present scenario of social entrepreneurship in India. 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Entrepreneurship Case Studies Entrepreneurship Case Studies, Entrepreneurship Case Study, ICMR develops Case Studies, Micro Case Studies, Latest Case Studies, Best Selling Case Studies, Short Case Studies, business research reports, courseware - in subjects like Entrepreneurship Cases, Marketing, Finance, Human Resource Management, Operations, Project Management, Business Ethics, Business strategy, Corporate governance ... Sheikh Hasina Thought Her Grip on Bangladesh Was Unbreakable Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who once brought democratic hope to Bangladesh, turned increasingly autocratic and met her downfall in a crackdown on protesters. Wayanad, India: Rescue workers search for survivors after ... Rescue operations are ongoing in India's southern Kerala state on Wednesday after heavy monsoon rains triggered deadly landslides that swept through homes and stranded hundreds of people ... 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