Impact of Motivation and Digitization on Women Entrepreneurship

By Afsana H.B

Women has left no stone unturned when it comes to taking up any profession.

Women have spread their wings across various domains. They need to explore their

strength of creativity and innovation. They are taking up an entrepreneurial role to reach

the pinnacle of success and to conceptualize this, they must have access to vario

• Language: English
• Publisher: amirparacha
• Release date: Jan 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9781805455097

Book preview

Impact of Motivation and Digitalization on

Women Entrepreneurship in Bengaluru

AFSANA S

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER II

STATE OF THE ART REVIEW

CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

CHAPTER IV

DATA ANALYSIS

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Entrepreneurship is one of the most significant discussions at the grass-root level of academics and research. In the perspective of the country’s economic development, the new business models are stepping stones for transforming the market, generating employment opportunities, resolving social issues, and creating income. The transformation starts from a person, firm, or organization to sustain itself in the competitive market. From that single change, every business model underway imbibes a similar strategy to achieve great heights, and the rest continue to follow the path.

This pace of industrial growth would employ a vast number of the working population in different age groups, gender, skilled or unskilled, and experienced or fresher. They are selected from diversified locations whose designation is identified based on the overall objective of the organization. But we have certain social impediments in realizing the objectives of the organization, which are myths, cultural norms, values, and gender discrimination in the business sector. Due to the revolution in all stages of societal life, those impediments are no longer considered an obstacle. Especially in countries like India, people started accepting this transformation, i.e., from the ancient Vedas to Vedantu mobile application. Digitalization has been transforming every business model to provide a better lifestyle for society. With the assistance of a digital platform, reaching the goals of an organization is an achievable task. This platform has fascinated women to be entrepreneurs. It has helped in achieving equal opportunity to evolve through the societal problems, leading themselves to be the face of the country's economic growth.

The extreme level of restriction for women entrepreneurs is their gender itself.

Women draw boundaries to protect themselves from society. From the viewpoint of an individual entrepreneur, men and women put their efforts at the same level of requirement in terms of traits, skills, capital amount, innovation, strategies, technology usage, and ability. The process remains the same for a person who starts the business with creativity 1

in the business model. But due to the conservative society, the process varies among men and women in a business when it comes to identification, trust, level of motivation, domain selection, qualification, technical skills, industrial exposure and experience, restricted market range, limited rewards, recognition, physical and psychological differences, social acceptance and firm performance. These challenges and limitations have been overcome by women who are equipped digitally. This study attempts to identify the relationship between motivation, digitalization, and firm performance of women entrepreneurs in Bengaluru and analyze the role of digitalization between motivation and firm performance.

1.1 Background of the Research

Entrepreneurship acts as a platform to showcase the creativity, passion and leadership abilities of a woman and leads her to a fruitful and successful career. The researcher is curious to understand what motivates or compels women to undertake a business. In general, the entrepreneurial ecosystem supports women to commence a business. India is a booming market with a start-up ecosystem that promotes the development of women in the entrepreneurial role. The question arises, whether it is facilitating women to convert their prospects in the course of doing business?

Nowadays, most of the studies cited under Management Studies and International Business are classified under the topics of investment, entrepreneurship, gender equality, technology, innovation, and business performance.

Ratten et al. (2020) reviewed the research articles during 2015-19 and found that the overall business literature had changed its focus on technology, entrepreneurship, and gender equality. Apart from reviews of that research, the state of any economic performance is based on the influence of effective utilization of the resources in the country.

Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) 2018 reported that women's participation has been rapidly leveraging on economic development. APEC Policy Partnership (2018) claimed that digitalization transforms any business and empowers women to overcome constraints. This research investigates the effect of motivation on women entrepreneurship with or without implementing digitalization.

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1.1.1 Global Scenario

World Bank initiated a project named ‘Doing Business’ launched in 2002 to measure the small and medium scale companies, enforce the efficient regulation, set the target for reforms, and significant argument for academicians and researchers. In the 2020

yearly report of ‘Doing Business,' they had identified small business firms in the largest trade city of 190 economies which also includes a city that has a larger population like India, China, Bangladesh, Brazil, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, United States, and Russian Federation.

As per the report of 2018-19, most of the economies featured to do business by adopting various business systems highlighted by World Bank. India is also one of the economies that introduced reforms by shortening regulatory complexity, the condensed time duration for permit process, smoothening procedures, minimizing charges related to building or construction permits and making stronger official association for the registration process.

For the development of trade facilities and making it more accessible across the globe, India has also reformed the document process for export, introduced electronic submission of documentation, strengthened the infrastructure for international trade, improving customs management on the web-based system, and initiated the insolvency issues to resolve, which eased the entrepreneurs to do business and to improve the probability of booming the organization by restructuring it (Ahmad and Hoffmann, 2007; Andrew and Kathryn, 2015; OECD, 2015, 2018, 2020).

The trends of entrepreneurship are fast and are becoming a key instrument in the development of the economy. Carree and Thurik (2010) observed the important factors that determine the growth of entrepreneurs and its impact on the economy with seven reasons, i.e., the revolution to innovate the operations of the industries, new technology for reducing cost, reforming the regulation to promote, privatize with stronger tendencies, core competency, increasing demand for varieties of product and creates service sectors.

Most of the countries are relatively at a low rate of entrepreneurial activities and lack industrial policies for both entry and exit of a new firm.

Global Entrepreneurship and Development Institute (GEDI) is one of the leading organization which involves in indexing and research linking Entrepreneurship and 3

economic development. As per the report of GEI - Global Entrepreneurship Index (2016–

2020), India stands with huge fluctuation in global rank, as in 2016 it was ranked 98 with 24.9 score points in the bottom sixth country of Asia-Pacific group. India later enhanced entrepreneurship and experiment start-up, internationalization, innovation, and business opportunities which have progressed the rank position to 69 with 25.8 score points in 2017 as the biggest gains in the global score.

From the top eight countries of the Asia-Pacific group, again in 2019, India fell in global rank to 78 with 25.1 score points due to the innovative effect of -5.84% at a total factor of productivity. GEI (2016, 2017) draws attention to the entrepreneurial ecosystem profile of the US, Japan, and India which, was proportionate. This Figure 1.1. (the spider chart), shows the profile of the countries to analyze the ecosystem policy for entrepreneurship in the Global Entrepreneurship Index January 2021. Performance analysis of the developed and developing countries like India are compared with three benchmark countries in optimal resource allocation, the planned increase on the index, and the strong performance with each pillar, whereas it also shows that the percentage of new effort on start-up skills (10%), networking (27%), cultural support (3%), technology absorption (53%) and risk capital (7%) is required to increase for the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

In comparison with the other three countries, in Fig 1.1. spider chart indicates that India is at the lowest in the profile facilitating of the entrepreneurial activities in various parameters such as technology absorption, networking, start-up skills, and risk capital, are almost in fatal values due to lack of education, knowledge and, entrepreneurial skills. It also captured the effective results on process innovation, product innovation, and competition to stay strong in the global entrepreneurial ecosystem. In most Asian countries, the progress in the creation of employment opportunities and women participation has gradually improved over the last two decades. UN Women (2019) reported the role of women to influence the development of the economy, to overcome the poverty among them, policies need to be addressed to prevent them from unpaid household works. Fortunately, a girl’s enrollment in secondary education has resulted in an increase by more than 10% globally and thinning the gap between genders in education.

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Image 1

Figure 1.1: Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Profile of India, United States, Japan, and China

Source: Global Entrepreneurship Index (GEI) https://thegedi.org/tool/

In the account of empowering women in entrepreneurship, there are many forums and activities that have been organized by many of the International Bodies organizing committees like Global Entrepreneurship Summit, International Women Entrepreneurship Summit. Events like the South Asian Women Development Forum (SAWDF), Women Entrepreneurship Day (WED) Summit, C2 Your Health Women's Initiative Women's Entrepreneur Summit (C2YHWI), and many more are supporting and inspiring women entrepreneurial committee, who are approaching mutually to promote their business.

Globally, most academic researchers and executives are focusing on the topics which are broadly categorized into Investment, Business performance, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation. Most commonly reviewed articles during the period of 2015-19 (Ratten et al., 2020) shows that they have shifted the focus to the topics like e-commerce, gender equality, and innovation.

In recent reports of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Association of South East Asian Nation (ASEAN), and American Express (2019) recognize the growth of the economy influenced by the rise in women's involvement in entrepreneurial activities. Women doing business is also one of the most 5

important factors for economic development and also faces more challenges than entrepreneurs in general. The level of education and effective utilization of resources like workforce, raw-material, machines, and methods in the business, with the digital platform, has an increasingly supportive system for the growth of women entrepreneurship in a competitive global market.

1.1.2 Indian Scenario

Business is not new to India. The global reach the Indians had in business during the pre colonial days is notable. Indians were leaders in trade and business during those days even after the social stratification which confined business to specific communities.

In the late 19th century, due to changes in policies and regulations, the economy experienced the growth phase towards the private sector. This resulted in opening markets globally and so, the freedom to trade abroad widened scope for the business groups and trading centres. The term ‘entrepreneurship’ was defined in the recent years knowing the role of creativity and innovation required in business. The active support of government and establishment of changes in schemes, plans, and education system motivates individuals to start their businesses.

The power of youth has led to surplus innovation and business ideas in the country.

The future of India has got a sharp and lofty vision through the new scheme named

‘Start-up India’, launched in 2016. This initiative has improved life in many districts with more than 40,000 start-ups across India. The vision is to become one of the fastest growing start-up ecosystems in the world.

Many more connective summits and policies were initiated after the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC). The summit was hosted by Prarambh – Startup conclave (BIMSTEC, 2016) for connectivity and explored the best of innovations. Their only objective was to exchange best practices and inspire the next generation. As per the five-year story report of Start-up India, 500

out of 1000 start ups establised by Incubation Centres are controlled by women.

Workshops were conducted by top level managers and women were encouraged to under take entrepreneurial activity.

World Bank project strengthens the business regulation in India by securing the credit transaction and introduced an online gateway in 2008, which made trade activities 6

on Electronic Data Interchange System through an online platform for the shipment process. In 2011, eased the start-up entrepreneur’s registration system from paper to online document uploads. Every year the facilities for start-ups are enhanced to commence the business operations.

From 2011 to 2015, India reinforced the act on shielding majority shareholder's conflicts on the board members of a company's policy and reduced the charges on registration, filing formalities, and documentation procedures. From 2016, India eliminated the minimum capital investment and certification requirements to establish the business. Going ahead in 2018, Permanent Account Number (PAN) and Tax Account Number (TAN) were merged for business to improve the online registration system. In 2019, Value Added Tax (VAT) was replaced with Goods and Service Tax (GST) which made the registration process even faster than the earlier process by integrating different other documents. India promotes business by abolishing documentation procedures for filing charges, Memorandum of Association, and Articles of Association, which have been replaced with e-documents.

Participation in entrepreneurial activities is measured in various parameters as per the Ministry of Statistics (2020) from the period of January 2019 to December 2019. As per this survey, women and men in India were provided the appropriate awareness to start a business. Especially to empower women, various workshops, seminars, conferences, and summits have been conducted on a different range of aspects for a healthy economic growth. As in Social Statistics Division report (2019), the environment for men and women has relatively achieved the goals of gender equality for all women and girls.

The census 2011 reported a hike in women's education and literacy rate by 20%, with 59.3, which resulted in similar growth of men. It clearly shows that the gender gap in education has reduced over the last decade. The recent report of Social Statistics Division 2016-17 shows results in males (19.8%) and females (20%) discontinue their education at the secondary level. Globally, women's participation in the workforce has increased more than 10% in the past two decades (UN Women, 2019).

A developing country like India has now realized the importance of women as an asset and valuable resource for a country that has always been dominated by men, and women have been underestimating their worth. In the new global economy (Harold P

Welsch, 2004), women entrepreneurship has become a primary concern for the country, 7

which can be highly utilized to generate income and wealth for the nation. Sharmistha and Kumar (2014) highlight the importance of women's force for the support of economic conditions of a nation and also the major challenges faced by women entrepreneurs who are constantly proving themselves in the society.

Entrepreneurship is the process of evolving the business to achieve their goals, the interest in improving skills, acquire knowledge, recognize the market requirement and transform their actual business model. Entrepreneurship is the process of creating and doing something different from existing things. With the considerable support, promoting entrepreneurship among women with the mandatory allocation of 10% seats for start-ups as women-owned and managed businesses (Government of Karnataka, 2015).

As per the report of SSI sector 2016, the participation of women in management and ownership, Karnataka has been trending compared to other states. The total number of women enterprises are more than one million and firm managed by women are less than one million in India which is representing 9-10% of women who manage and own business. The review of the SSI report highlights state-wise statistics that Karnataka stands 3rd rank in India, after Kerala and Tamil Nadu, with maximum women entrepreneurs who independently manage and own the enterprises. The estimated number of women entrepreneurs is large in Bengaluru, compared to other cities in Karnataka.

This research intends to investigate women entrepreneurs from India’s Silicon Valley, i.e., Bengaluru, which is another home for many companies from the USA and emerges as an Information Technology (IT) hub. Bengaluru is well placed to create a world-class start-up ecosystem by promoting relevant sectors on setting up incubators and facilitates the mentor institutions. As per the report of the Start-up India Scheme, the Government of India (2020) highlights the action points of various key updates.

Bengaluru is the preferred city for the various meetings from multiple ministries under the Start-Up India initiative and one of the bio-clusters to promote start-ups in the biotechnology sector to foster and facilitate bio-entrepreneurship.

In the report of Micro Small and Medium Enterprises MSME (2008), every research activities