Even when you have an innovative idea for a business it is not easy to act on it. You might be clueless and lost as to where to start and you might not have enough money for an investment and be unaware of business loans and CGTMSE loans. To help you achieve your dreams hassle-free here is a list of 5 women entrepreneurs who are working to empower SMEs in India.
Why SMEs are essential and why they need help
SME stands for small and medium enterprises. They play a critical role in India’s economy. According to the Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statics (DGCIS) in 2018 and 2019 MSME- related products added up to 48.1 percent of India’s total exports.
Even though the companies are important for the economy, most business owners do not know how to deal with various challenges that come from limited resources and investment interests from outside. They lack organisational skills and have an inability to fulfil regulatory compliances. Quick adaptation to modern technology is also difficult for many companies.
Upon observing such shortcomings, women entrepreneurs have come up with ways to help SMEs. By providing services such as data analytics, account book maintenance, and facilitating regulatory compliances they try to solve the problems faced by SMEs.
Following five women have come up with various ways to deal with different problems that can bother and hinder the small and medium businesses grow. They also have done MSME registration of their businesses.
Econolytics by Pritha Dutta Chowdary
If enterprises make decisions based on data, it can help them to grow faster. Pritha Dutta knew the importance of data-driven decisions and she founded Econolytics.
Most SMEs are aware of the words like AI, Big data, and machine learning but they do not understand how these technologies affect their enterprises. Econolytics has a network of scientists and engineers who have mastery over all data-related information. They help the clients understand the importance of data and its impact on their companies.
This start-up is based in Delhi and Mumbai. And they charge 20 percent from each project on its platform.
Banka & Banka by Shristi Banka
Shristi is 24 years old and she formerly worked for Ernst & Young. While she was working, she saw that several SMEs have failed because they had no guidance on regulatory compliances. To address this problem, she started the start-up Banka & Banka CFO Services with less than a lakh of initial investment in September 2019. The start-up is based in Mumbai.
The company helps SMEs with corporate and statutory compliances like direct taxes, indirect taxes, regular filings on MCA, GST, and corporate governance. Their service firm provides all the requirements of businesses that are related to the statutory compliances so that their clients need not hire multiple organisations for various services. They charge the time that is taken to deliver the services.
Aaroh by Arundhati Mukherjee
Arundhati Mukherjee has worked for large companies such as TCS, Accenture and Birla Group. She has also worked across various industries like IT, Auto components, Hospitals and education.
Through her experience of working at various companies, she realised that SMEs are underserved by marketing companies. According to her, SMEs are the growth-engine of the economy, therefore, she wanted to bring the SMEs the best-in-class practices and help them succeed in the long run. To achieve this, she created Aaroh.
Even though SMEs are the growth engine of the economy, many marketing and communication agencies do not have a clear strategy and focus towards the SMEs and in the process, they remain neglected. Aaroh helps SMEs define their marketing strategy and communication regardless of which country they desire to grow their company.
CAXpert by Yashodhara Bajoria and Neha Goenka
Yashodhara and Neha are sisters-in-law. Yashodhara once managed a non-banking financial company. She is aware that small businesses cannot afford to hire full-time accounts and this results in erroneous and incomplete accounts books. She realised the same with Neha’s business.
To tackle this problem the sisters-in-law founded CAXpert in Nov 2018. CAXpert provides simple, convenient, and economical accounting solutions to SMEs. They help in recording sales, expenses, orders processing and also recommend new ways to optimize operations. These start-ups help SMEs to overcome their business hurdles with ease.