In this article, we have created a list of top women entrepreneurs in India, who have started low and are now as good and worthy as any other business run by men.
Business is not just for men but for women too! Over the years, women have worked twice as hard as men to prove their worth and stand where they are today.
According to a study, with respect to women finding opportunities to start ventures (60%), validation with respect to skills (52%) and do not feel the impending doom of failure for their startup (57%). India is growing and this blooming with opportunities for women.
So if you’re having second thoughts about opening your own venture, mentioned below is a list of top 20 women entrepreneurs in India, who have started low and are now as good and worthy as any other business run by men.
Read on to know more about such powerful women.
Table of contents
- 1) Aditi Gupta
- 2) Aditi Balbir
- 3) Ankita Gaba
- 4) Ashwini Asokan
- 5) Chitra Gurnani Daga
- 6) Debadutta Upadhyaya
- 7) Falguni Nayar
- 8) Garima Satija
- 9) Richa Kar
- 10) Sabina Chopra
- 11) Shradha Sharma
- 12) Pranshu Bhandari Patni
- 13) Harpreet Kaur
- 14) Suchi Mukherjee
- 15) Suruchi Wagh
- 16) Upasana Taku
- 17) Zeenia Percy Master
- 18) Swati Bhargava
- 19) Vandana Luthra
- 20 ) Ritu Kumar
1) Aditi Gupta
Founder: Menstrupedia
Born – Garhwa, Jharkhand, India
Alma mater -National Institute of Design
Genre -Menstrupedia Comic
Spouse – Tuhin Paul
Forbes India 30 Under 30 2014
Follow Aditi Gupta on LinkedIn
Follow Aditi Gupta on Instagram
Aditi is working extensively towards spreading awareness about menstruation and has conducted several surveys and researches regarding the same and how it affects a girl. She carried out this extensive research as a Ford Foundation research Scholar.
About: Due to the lack of education and awareness about menstruation and having gone through a similar difficulty, Aditi along with her husband, Tuhin Patel, decided to educate young girls about menstruation in a fun and an easy way. Hence they created a comic book in Hindi and also started a website on the same. The comic and the website both have guides on hygiene, health, and ways to be active during periods, plus – answers to frequently asked queries.
2) Aditi Balbir
Founder- V resorts
Alma mater -Indian School of Business
Spouse – Sumit Singh
Occupation: Angel Investor
Date of Birth: September 5
Fortune 100 Most Powerful Women Asia 2017
Having traveled across 135+ cities over six continents, Aditi knows exactly what a traveler looks for in an inn they will be residing in during a trip. Therefore, Aditi has built the V Resorts business from the ground up, has carefully curated, developed, and managed the business since its inception. This independent lady has been recognized as Fortune 100 Most Powerful Women Asia 2017 and Dell Foundation’s 200 most powerful women entrepreneurs in the world in 2016.
About: Through this venture, Aditi manages unique estate constructs all over India. She also pushes women through her project to become independent and self-reliant.
3) Ankita Gaba
Co-Founder- SocialSamosa.com
Date of Birth: 4 April 1985
From – Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Almameter – University of Mumbai
Being one of the founders of Superchooha and serving as an online media strategist for the likes of Colors, Zapak, Mahindra, Ponds, and Idea Cellular, Ankita finally decided to start SocialSamosa.com which is mostly centered around social media marketing and management.
About: Anything related to Indian social media thoughts, ideas, trends, news, and dialogue finds a place at SocialSamosa.com. Ankita realizes the importance of social media therefore highlights the importance of its usage and deriving the benefits through such platforms. The idea behind SocialSamosa is to be the go-to destination for everything related to the Indian Social Media Industry. Furthermore, Social Samosa has also been awarded as The Blog Of The Year at The WATAwards 2013.
4) Ashwini Asokan
Founder: Mad Street Den
Ashwini has previously been leading the mobile innovation team at Intel’s Interaction and Experience Research Lab (IXR) in Silicon Valley and her husband Anand Chandrasekaran who was involved in building computer chips that imitate the human brain at Stanford University, decided to move back to India and launch Mad Street Den.
About Mad Street Dan: Being an artificial intelligence and computer vision company, MAD uses AI to get any smartphone camera to identify faces, detect facial expressions, emotions and reactions of facial gestures.
5) Chitra Gurnani Daga
Co-Founder: Thrillophilia
Chitra, an alumnus of the Indian School of Business and her husband Abhishek Daga, alumnus of the IIR BHU decided to la8unch this venture in order to pursue their dreams of opening a business.
About Thrillophilia: for those who are travel freaks, Thrillophilia has the best in store for you. Their package involves best local experiences with the help of hand-picked guides and vendors with more than 3.5 million monthly users and 12,500 listed activities across 125+ destinations, Thrillophilia is India’s biggest online travel agencies.
If you’re a female entrepreneur and want to get featured on our list of top women entrepreneurs, please contact us.
6) Debadutta Upadhyaya
CEO & Co-Founder: Timesavers Dotcom Private Limited
Debadutta is a business student who believes in learning every day. Debadutta along with Lounish Bhatia launched this venture.
About: This platform provides you with reliable domestic helpers who can assist you with cleaning, repairs, handyman jobs to running errands and helping in paperwork.
7) Falguni Nayar
CEO: Nykaa
Having an experience of over 25 years in financial services, Falguni is now leading India’s number one beauty retailer company also known as Nykaa.
About Nykaa: Nykaa is an online website which deals with beauty and wellness. It has it’s partnerships and tie-ups with the world’s top-notch personal care corporations like Unilever, P&G, L’Oreal, Johnson & Johnson and many more.
8) Garima Satija
Founder: PoshVine
Holding a degree in psychology and an MBA, Garima has previously worked with Naukri.com, Quadrangle Consulting Services and Ozone Media.
About: This venture is to provide not just a comfortable inn but also quality food to its customers. PoshVine allows you to pick restaurants of your choice and also let you make reservations free of cost.
9) Richa Kar
Co-Founder & CEO: Zivame
Realizing the need for an online lingerie store, that is comfortable and convenient for most women, Richa decided to launch Zivame started in 2011 in Bangalore, Zivame acquired its fame for being the first web platform having over two thousand plus designs, sizes and shapes to choose from.
“If you are strong, focused and passionate about what you want to do, everything falls in place.”
Richa Kar – Co-Founder & CEO , Zivame (Women Entrepreneurs of India)
10) Sabina Chopra
Founder: Yatra.com
Having work experience in eBookers, Europe’s leading online travel company as the head of the India operations, and at the Japan Airlines, Sabina is India’s one of the most innovative tech entrepreneurs.
About: Yatra’s goal is to provide travellers with affordable travel bookings. They are very pocket friendly with more than satisfactory results.
11) Shradha Sharma
Founder & CEO: YourStory Media Private Limited
Having worked at The Times of India and CNBC TV18, she realised that young entrepreneurs who are willing to launch their own start-ups had no platform to voice their opinions. Hence, she felt the need to start her very own venture, YourStory Media, as a blog which involves articles about all sorts of business practices.
About: This platform aims to inspire young entrepreneurs by narrating the story of unsung businessmen/women and their remarkable works.
Follow these women entrepreneurs and support new talent.
12) Pranshu Bhandari Patni
Co-Founder: CultureAlley
Pranshu Bhandari Patni who is trying to change the way India learns and speaks the English language. Pranshu is a Co-Founder of CultureAlley, which has developed Hello English, an interactive, mobile-based application that allows speakers of 16 different vernacular languages to learn English right on their phones.
Her achievements are as follows:
2015: Listed as Forbes India’s 30, under 30 achievers for creating an app that is one of the top 10 educational apps in the world
2014: Received the Most Innovative Mobile App for India Award from the Internet and Mobile Association of India
ABOUT CultureAlley:
The app which was developed out of Jaipur, went on to become the No. 1 English learning and speaking app on the Google Play store in India, within eight months of its launch. Apart from India, Hello English is the number one education app in Nepal, Bangladesh, and many countries in the Middle East. Launched in October 2014, it already has a subscriber base of 1.2 crores and has received an overwhelmingly positive response with an average rating of 4.5/5 with over 1.6 lakh reviews. The app uses gamification and speech recognition to enable highly engaging learning models. Bite-sized lessons are clubbed with interactive games, with rewards at every pit stop. It also uses contextualization, wherein users can keep up with their English while reading daily news and watching videos.
13) Harpreet Kaur
Founder: Love 4 Apple
Known to be a serial entrepreneur, Harpreet Kaur is the founder of a venture which is called Love 4 Apple. She had this idea of creating her own business where she could cater to the needs of the customers who demand products which are related to the company Apple. What started out as an India turned out to be successful business venture.
About: The platform, Love 4 Apple basically caters those people who wish to buy the products which are associated with Apple products, mobile phones, iPads, and more. people who love Apple products can find almost everything and anything about their device and related accessories as and when they want. Love4Apple was started in 2013. It came about to address the lack of good and genuine accessories for Apple products in India. It started out as an experiment with just a few products picked up from various brands across the world and eventually became the sole distributer for a very reputed speaker brand.
14) Suchi Mukherjee
Founder: Limeroad.com
Suchi, founder and CEO of a social commerce site for urban women, had received the commonwealth Cambridge scholarship to study economics at Cambridge University, after which she studied finance and economics at LSE. Suchi was a part of the initial development of both Skype and Gumtree before starting Limeroad.
About: Suchi’s clothing brand’s selling point is their scrapbooks. It lets you create your looks and lets you choose the items that best fits you. Limeroad mainly specializes in women’s clothing but have new branches out for men’s and kid’s clothing. Their fashion is not only groovy but also affordable.
15) Suruchi Wagh
Founder & COO: Jombay.com
Trained classical singer and Bharatnatyam dancer, Suruchi finishes her master’s in Engineering Management at the University of South California, LA. She worked as a research analyst in the office of the President of Silicon Valley. There she developed micro insurance products for emerging markets.
About: Jombay is an HR solution firm best known for Managerial, Learning and development solutions. It is best known for leadership development and behavioural assessment.
16) Upasana Taku
Co-Founder: Mobikwin, Zaakpay
Upasana Taku holds a BTech degree in Industrial Engineering from Nationals Institute of Technology and an MS in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University. Her work experience constitutes 12 years in the workforce, 10 & 4 years in Financial services and an entrepreneur respectively.
About: Zaakpay claims to offer safe and secure online transactions to its user base, with a promise to be sublime, crystal clear and seamless.
Mobikwik is a mobile wallet, enabling one to pay for recharge, bills and shopping.
17) Zeenia Percy Master
CEO: Xenia Hospitalit7y solutions
Born in a family of entrepreneurs, Xenia pursued BA in Hospitality, Finance and Revenue Management with Merit at the Glion Institute of higher education in Switzerland. She has been a key member for brands like Sofitel and Missioni.
About: Based in the Greek concept of hospitality where generosity and courtesy is shown to all guests, Xenia answers to your all our demands, from large scale corporate events to destination wedding to0 small scale kid events.
18) Swati Bhargava
Co-Founder: Cash Karo
Swati lives by the motto Health is Wealth and regularly indulges in the art of yoga and meditation. She is a passout of the prestigious LSE. The growing digital e-commerce was her return to return after years of staying abroad.
About: Cash Karo has a unique way of entrancing their user base by simply providing you with the best possible deals available in the market.
19) Vandana Luthra
Founder: VLCC
Born on 12 July 1959, an Indian female entrepreneur and the founder of VLCC Health care ltd, Vandana Luthra is the founder of VLCC. Born to a mechanical engineer and an ayurvedic doctor in New Delhi, Vandana drew inspiration from her mother who ran a charitable initiative by the name of- Amar Jyoti. Vandana always wanted to touch people’s lives, and hence, after completing her graduation from the Polytechnic for Women in New Delhi she went to Europe to gain expertise in beauty, food and nutrition, and skincare. She is one the top women entrepreneurs well known across the globe.
About: VLCC started as a small company in Safdarjung Development Area New Delhi, VLCC has now become recognized not only nationally but also internationally. Today, the company offers plenty of services like Slimming, beauty & grooming, laser, hair transplant, and many more. Currently, VLCC is one of the most leading Beauty and wellness service industry in India. With more than 5000 people including medical professional and nutrition experts and cosmetologists and beauty professionals, VLCC is now providing the service in more than 326 locations in 153 cities and 13 countries.
20 ) Ritu Kumar
Founded: Label Ritu Kumar
Ritu Kumar is an Indian fashion designer who began her Fashion career in Kolkata. Initially, she was making bridal wear and evening clothes. After decades, she entered an international market. She has been operating her business in several different forging cities France and New York. In 2013, She awarded Padma Shree by the government of India.
About: Ritu Kumar has the largest and most respected designer-wear brand in India today. Since 1969 she has developed a unique style of her own, reflecting the ancient traditions of Indian craftsmanship in a contemporary style. She personally curates every design and her clothes range from ethnic to western and various accessories.
If you’re a female entrepreneur and want to get featured on our list of top women entrepreneurs, please contact us.
Also Read
Leave a Reply