'Women entrepreneurs, more than men, ensure investors get promised returns'
Rasheeda Bhagat
The DWEN conference in Austin, Texas.
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Austin (Texas), June 2:
About 160 women entrepreneurs from 15 countries, including India, are sharing their stories – experiences and challenges of starting their own enterprises – at the three-day Dell Women's Entrepreneur Network (DWEN) that began in Austin, Texas, on Sunday.
The theme for the fifth annual DWEN event, hosted in partnership with Intel, is Bold Beginnings, Brave Futures: The Stories and Technologies inspiring Global Entrepreneurs. The core objective of this initiative by Dell is to help women entrepreneurs scale up their businesses by zeroing in on the right business connections and proper networking. An integral part of this annual event is women sharing their stories.
Wendy Simpson, Chairman, Springboard Australia, and an entrepreneur herself who has taken this annual event to Australia, said the enterprise has been working for several years now to catapult women beyond home and cottage industries and encourage them to get into high-technology enterprises. The organisation, she adds, "is a highly vetted expert network of innovators, investors and influencers who are dedicated to building high-growth technology-oriented companies led by women."
It also connects women to venture capitalists. "Actually," she says, "the term venture capitalist, which once upon a time used to be vulture capitalist, is going to change very soon." Her experience, after years of mentoring women entrepreneurs, is that more than men, women entrepreneurs do "relentless work" in ensuring that their investors get the return they were promised when the equity came in. Women entrepreneurs participating here have done everything, from starting boutique art hotels and technology companies to launching cosmetics for 45+ women and sending tourists to space.
On Austin as the chosen location, a Dell spokesperson said that one major reason is that the US has been voted the best place to be a female entrepreneur two years in a row in the Gender-GENI rankings. Additionally, it was in Austin that Dell had been launched, in a dormitory in the University of Texas. Austin is also the tech major's global headquarters. "So it seemed a fit venue to celebrate the network's fifth anniversary," she said.
(The writer is in Austin at the invitation of Dell.)
(This article was published on June 2, 2014)
Most countries continue to be unfriendly for women entrepreneurs
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Austin (Texas), June 2:
The 2014 Gender-GEDI (Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index) survey has found that three quarters of the 30 countries surveyed do not have "the most fundamental conditions required for female entrepreneurs to prosper".
Commissioned by Dell, and released at the fifth DWEN (Dell Women's Entrepreneur Network) event in Austin on Monday, this second annual survey found that for the second year the United States continued to top the chart in being the most favourable place providing the right entrepreneurial ecosystems and business environment to meet the aspirations of women entrepreneurs.
While the US scored a high 83, Australia came second with a score of 80, followed by Sweden, France and Germany with 73 and 67. India is at the bottom of the pile, getting the 26th position and a low score of 26, below Nigeria (29) Morocco and Ghana, each with 27.
The four counties worse off than India when it comes to women starting their own enterprises are Uganda, Egypt, Bangladesh and Pakistan; the last at the bottom of the pile with a miserable score of 11.
Urging governments and policymakers to do more to support female entrepreneurship, the report noted that adequate access to capital - sometimes even something as fundamental as a formal bank account - is crucial for women to start their own business ventures.
"However, in 14 of the 30 countries, 50 per cent or more of the female population is unbanked, with the gender disparities being the highest in Turkey, where there is a 50 per cent difference between men and women with bank accounts."
In the emerging markets, the news is equally bad for job opportunities in the formal sectors; "in India and Pakistan, formal employment is so highly sex segregated that no employment sectors are balanced", notes the report. Better gender rights and more women at top positions can improve the environment for female entrepreneurship, it says.
However, the good news for the emerging economies is that female startup activity is higher in these countries, compared to the US and Europe. Opportunity perception is rather low in these developed countries compared to Africa, where the number is a high 69 per cent.
In many African countries there is 86 female to every 100 male startups. Surprisingly, Ghana has more female startups than male at a rate of 121 to 100! The same is true of Latin American and Caribbean countries.
Karen Quintos, senior vice president and chief marketing officer, Dell, reiterated the global major's commitment to empower people everywhere with technology solutions, and said that this survey gives valuable insights that help advance women's enterprises and improve global economy.
The writer is in Austin on an invitation from Dell.
(This article was published on June 2, 2014)
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