Women entrepreneurs face a series of problems right from the beginning till the enterprise

functions. Being a woman itself poses various problems to a woman entrepreneur. The
problems of Indian women pertain to her responsibility towards family, society and work.
The tradition, customs, socio cultural values, ethics, motherhood, subordinates, physically
weak, feelings of insecurity are some peculiar problems that the Indian women are coming
across while they jump into entrepreneurship.

1. Family ties: Women in India are very emotionally attached to their families. They are
supposed to attend to all the domestic work, to look after the children and other
members of the family. They are over burden with family responsibilities which take
away a lot of their time and energy and hence it becomes difficult for the women to
devote more time to the business.
2. Male dominated society: Even though our constitution speaks of equality between
sexes, male chauvinisms still the order of the day. Women are not treated equal to
men. All these factors put a break in the growth of women entrepreneurs.
3. Lack of education: Women in India are lagging far behind in the field of education.
Most of the women are illiterate. Due to lack of proper education, women
entrepreneurs remain in dark about the development of new technology, new methods
of production, marketing and other governmental support which will encourage them
to flourish.
 4. Social barriers: The traditions and customs prevailing in Indian societies towards
women sometimes stand as an obstacle for them to grow and prosper.
5. Problem of finance: Women entrepreneurs suffer a lot in raising and meeting the
financial needs of the business. Financial institutes don‟t come forward to provide
financial assistance to women borrowers on the ground of their less credit worthiness
and more chances of business failure.
6. Low risk-bearing capacity: Women in India are by nature weak, shy and mild. They
cannot bear the amount risk which is essential for running an enterprise.
7. Limited mobility: Women mobility in India is highly limited and has become a
problem due to traditional values and inability to drive vehicles.
8. Exploitation by middle men: Since women cannot run around for marketing,
distribution and money collection, they have to depend on middle men for the above
activities. Middle men tend to exploit them in the guise of helping. They add their
own profit margin which results in less sales and lesser profit.
9. Lack of self confidence: Women entrepreneurs because of their inherent nature, lack
of self-confidence which is essentially a motivating factor in running an enterprise
successfully.

There has been a tremendous change in the women entrepreneurs in last five decades, the
women entrepreneurs of the fifties where compulsive factors led to the creation of women
entrepreneurs. Women entrepreneurs of the sixties were where women began to aspire but
also accepted the social cultural traditions. In the seventies, the women opened up new
frontier as they had not aspirations but ambition. In eighties women were educated in highly
sophisticated technological and professional education and they became equally contributing
partners. In the nineties the concept of women heir was talked about for the very first time.
And women entrepreneurs of the 21stcentury are considered to “Jill of all trades”.

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HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Confederation of Women Entrepreneurs (COWE), a Hyderabad-based national level

organization and country's premier institution for women thoroughly devoted towards
entrepreneurship development.

COWE was inaugurated on 22nd November, 2004 by honorable chief minister of Andhra
Pradesh then, Dr. Y.S.R. Reddy. The NGO has emerged as a well organized and established
organization working towards their goal of liberating women by making them financially
independent and vibrant.

COWE in a short span has achieved recognition with Government, bankers and industrial
associations & bodies. From 20 members as on the date of commencement, today the
membership is over 500 women. Altruism or selfless concern for the well being of women
prompted the founders to come together and start the organization. The NGO is a not for
profit organization was launched to empower women through entrepreneurship, believing in
the philosophy „Of the women, for the women & by the women‟.

The women achieve the following as the members of the organization.

Networking amongst members

Negotiating with large retailing chains

The best incentives from the state & central governments which help the women

to reach world markets.

By being a part of COWE portal the women earn global mileage.

The main objective is to enhance women‟s opportunities in achieving the vision by creating a
resource base of technical know-how, management, marketing skills, finance, infrastructure
and equipment to promote entrepreneurship. COWE is in the process of strengthening the
data base by setting up a Business Consultancy Cell at Hyderabad.

The vision of COWE is to build a women force that is economically empowered, valued
citizens of the nation. By pooling the dormant talent, skills, practical knowledge and
resources of a woman and combining it with her intrinsic quality of dedication and
commitment, we will achieve this. They reach out to women from all sectors and all

8
segments and all ages by awareness building workshops both in the COWE office and in
colleges.

COWE, with an unstinting support from the government of Andhra Pradesh, banks like SBI,
SBH, SIDBI, ZDH /SEQUA partnership program of Indo German Chamber of Commerce
has conducted many training programs, seminars / conferences, exhibitions. Some mega
projects like developing industrial clusters for engineering and food sectors in model
industrial estates are also being a reality with COWE.

COWE has 30 Acres of industrial estate near Medchal, Medak District, 1000 sq yards &
2000 sq yards plots are available for general industries. It is the first of its kind in Asia and in-
turn COWE completing the Sale Agreement with all the women entrepreneur allottees of the
individual plots in COWE‟s industrial and engineering estate.

COWE has received the In-Principle sanction from the department of MSME for a grant
applied under the Integrated Infrastructure Development (IID) scheme to develop the
engineering Park at Toopran, Medak District. COWE earning a member seat on the Board of
Department of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprise (MSME) Ministry of MSME, and
Government of India. The NGO has signed an MOU with National Small Industries
Corporation (NSIC) on 12th October 2010. University of London and COWE are joining
forces to create a trusted circle of cooperation to support female ventures to trade in the
global market place. The successful female owned venture DegreeArt.com in London (UK)
has donated the fully functioning online innovative platform to support the cooperation of
COWE and the BRIC centers of excellence, to ensure access to the global market place for
female designs, artifacts and or services. COWE has also extended a Branch at New Delhi.

COWE Umbrella constitutes the activities initiated since inception with certain ultimate
objectives for the benefit of women. Some of them are briefed below.
COWE members participated in many seminars, both National and International. They have
interacted with CII, BYST, ZDH-SEQUA, GOAP-IT, NCEAR, World Bank, HYSEA,
NASSCOM and so on.
COWE has conducted International seminars in big forums like GITEX which was supported
by IT&C department. Government of Andhra Pradesh, parallel to sessions being conducted
by NASSCOM, HYSEA, & CII.

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Delegates have visited other countries to participate/learn from the workshops, seminars and
trade fairs there with the support of ZDH-SEQUA, MSME & NSIC. COWE members have
made their presence in Australia, Germany, Italy, Srilanka, Egypt, Malaysia, Thailand,
Slovenia, Spain and United States of America. The varied profile of the delegates has been
appreciated. COWE members also benefited from the B2B contacts, meeting with various
chambers and officials of important government bodies of the respective countries. The
wealth of information is passed on to the COWE office and it percolates down to members
who want specific information.
One of the major activity of the COWE is a yearly Trade Carnival which is a platform for
Women Entrepreneurs to display and market the products to a wider and large section of the
society. The trade carnival has been a great support to small women entrepreneurs. The major
feature of this trade carnival is that it not only is a platform to exhibit & market the products,
but it also creates an environment to interact with the people who can guide and lead them to
be a leading entrepreneur. They have conducted the carnivals successfully from 2007 to
2011. The amount of the stalls was subsidized for COWE Members enabling even small
traders/manufacturers to participate. This facilitated a market for the products and provided
year long B2B contacts. Promotion and publicity improved their visibility. Other states have
also participated and women organizations have sent their delegates to study the organization
of Trade Fairs.
Bio-Technology Park and Food Park are in the offing. COWE assists members by providing
incubators. A few members started their business through these incubator facilities and later
shifted into their own offices. Incubator facilities have facilitated easy start-ups.
COWE initially financed 5 looms in Dharmavaram and they have with their repayments set
up 24 more looms. The NGO also provided marketing support to them besides giving them
the designs and advice. COWE also facilitated micro-finance in Jadcherla.

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 2.1 CITING OF PAST WORK

The first part of the literature review provides a glimpse of the socioeconomic factors that
hinder the growth of women entrepreneurs. The second part reviews studies on the role of
NGOs in promoting and helping the women entrepreneurship development. It also gives an
insight on the motivational factors for women to start an enterprise.

OBSTACLES

Rathore and Chabra,1 (1991) in the paper on “Promotion of Women Entrepreneurship

Training Strategies” states that Indian women find it increasingly difficult to adjust
themselves to the dual role that they have to play as traditional housewives and compete with
men in the field of business and industry. Working women are often tossed between home
and work and experience mental conflicts as they are not able to devote the necessary amount
of time and energy to their home and children and find it mostly difficult and sometimes
impossible to pursue as a career. It showed that the married migrated women entrepreneurs
coming from nuclear families experience greater role stress than the unmarried local women
entrepreneurs coming from joint families. The paper also lists economic backwardness, lack
of family and community support, ignorance of opportunities, lack of motivation, shyness
and inhibition, preference for traditional occupation and preference for secure jobs as the
factors that inhibit promotion of grass root entrepreneurship among rural women.

Carter et al2 (2001) in his “Women Business Ownership: A Review of the Academic” states
that women entrepreneurs experience many obstacles, which include traditional cultural
barriers. They are treated differently and the level of their education, way of life and position
given to them also varies than men. Women in India are confined to household activities and
their involvement at workplace is also limited. In our society, the male child is given more
priority; hence, there is lack of schooling and proper training of females. Also, women face a
lack of confidence as they do not get the appropriate support from their friends and family
which obstructs their growth in the corporate world. They do not get access to many
resources such as transportation, education and literacy, technology and financial resources
for carrying on their entrepreneurial activities. According to the article, the main barrier faced
by women entrepreneurs is male domination, excluding the women from various
communication networks, due to which they are not able to develop contacts with other

11
individuals and organizations which affects their working. Also, family responsibilities upon
them adds to the lack of experience in the particular field and also gets in the way of the
growth female entrepreneurs

ROLE OF NGO’S

Kirve and Kanitkar3 (1993) the article "Entrepreneurship at the Grass Roots: Developing the
Income Generating Capabilities of Rural Women", talks about the experience of a Pune-based
Non-Government Organization (NGO) Jana Probodhini (JP) in helping the rural women
through skill training in technical and business areas. The study revealed that the techniques,
which were incorporated as part of the training input, proved extremely useful for the
trainees. Later interactions with trainees during the evaluation showed a definite change in
most of the trainees. It was also found that certain issues, apparently small, assume
significance in the dynamics operating in the villages, for example the refusal of the family
members to encourage the purchase of an asset by unmarried women in the house points to
slight but invisible gender-related discrimination. In conclusion the author recommends that
Entrepreneurship Development Agencies need to get involved in income-generating
activities. Nothing else would serve the cause of entrepreneurship better than the
development of the rural sector.

Arvinda4 (2001) in the report “Women Entrepreneurs: An Exploratory Study” takes a sample
of 100 women entrepreneurs who were selected by random sampling technique. The twin
cities Hyderabad and Secundarabad were chosen for the study, as the area is the capital of the
state. The report covered women entrepreneurs who are involved in different kinds of
enterprises. The selected respondents were divided into three basic groups – service, trading
and manufacturing sector. The results concluded that 37 respondents were in service and
trading sectors, 26 respondents were in the manufacturing sector. The responses obtained in
this study in a way suggest that there is an absolute need for more entrepreneurship
development programmes and societal support for women. Women entrepreneurs in general
face conflicts of work and home roles. The main conflicts in work role pertained to, failure to
expand the enterprise and utilize optimum skills which are available. Non-availability of time
to spend with family and being a good spouse were the conflict areas faced by many of the
women. The report concluded that women entrepreneurship requires help from the

12
government in the form of NGO‟s to help the women in motivating and facilitating them to
take up entrepreneurial careers.

MOTIVATIONAL FACTORS

Eleanor Brantley Schwartz‟s 5 (1976) the article, “Entrepreneurship, A New Female

Frontier” is based on the interviewing 20 female entrepreneurs. In the article Eleanor
combined exploratory and descriptive research in her efforts to identify individual
characteristics, motivations, and attitudes that these women had in common. She concluded
that the motivators for the women to start a business in this sample were the need to achieve,
job satisfaction, profit generation and independence to take own decisions. This was the first
notable article on women‟s entrepreneurship which appeared in the mid-1970.

Rani6 (1986) in her study “Potential Women Entrepreneurs”, found that the desire to do
something independently was the prime motivation factor to start a business activity amongst
the 30 sample respondents. For study purpose the respondents were selected during a training
programme for potential wom]]raen entrepreneurs, held at Hyderabad in October 1985,
organized by APITCO. The respondents were mostly from the twin cities of Hyderabad and
Secundarabad. Most of the respondents were in the age group of 21-30 years and the
respondents came from middle class families. The objective of her study was to find out the
factors that prompted women to start their own businesses. She concluded that the desire to
do something independent was observed as the prime motivating factor, some women viewed
entrepreneurship as a tool for earning money. Other factors were that women wanted to take
independent decisions.

It can be concluded that the women face a lot of problems for starting an enterprise. Some of
the problems are lack of family support, lack of motivation and securing finance. NGOs play
a major role in helping the women in motivating and facilitating them to take up
entrepreneurial careers. Also the prime motivating factors many women took up
entrepreneurship for earning money and also take independent decisions.

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 CHAPTER III

COMPANY PROFILE

This chapter gives the profile of the NGO- COWE (Confederation of Women Entrepreneurs).It
also gives an insight to the role of the organization and the different marketing strategies adopted
by the organization. Later in the project the data analysis also show the extent to which the
organization helps the women in setting up a business enterprise.

COWE is a benchmark platform for women entrepreneurs in the country. The objective of the
organization is to foster the 'Economic Empowerment of Women', particularly the SME segment,
by helping them to become successful entrepreneurs and to become a part of the main stream
industry. The NGO is engaged in the social and economic upliftment of women through
entrepreneurship. The slogan “Gearing women power” stands for the democratic structure of
COWE and stands for

“Of the women, for the women and by the women”

Entrepreneurs from varied fields and those dedicated to the promotion of entrepreneurship
amongst women, got together to form COWE. They work un-relentlessly towards providing
opportunities for women in Industry, Trade, Retail, Franchising and Service sectors. Traditional
professions are also encouraged and hand holding support is given wherever required. The
expertise and experience of seniors in the field is sought and passed on to the members.