There are some triggering factors that push a woman to launch her business; such as the need for a job, invest savings, become one’s own boss, realise her own dream or maintain a family tradition. Women may also have to balance home and work, which might lead to stress. This can get accentuated if the family environment is not conducive to doing business.

However it is a ground reality that many women quit their start-up dreams because of lack of resources, higher risk factors, and lack of marketing, management, financial skills and the burden of compliance costs. Access to hard and soft infrastructure, market, skilled HR, appropriate credit, technology, and statutory compliances are some of the key areas of support requirements.

Women led start-ups in eastern and north eastern India have often shared that there is an absence of mentorship, and most importantly an ecosystem that can guide and strengthen first generation women entrepreneurs. The start-up ecosystem consists of a group of people, start-ups, and related organizations that work as a system to create and scale new start-ups. The start-up ecosystem in India is flourishing with more women being motivated every day to set up their own enterprises. Each start-up goes through certain stages of growth such as the seed stage, minimal viable product stage and then a fully established brand stage. However, access to appropriate financing avenues and trusted mentorship networks are still a luxury to many. Women led start-ups are especially seen to be at crossroads when it comes to taking their ventures to the next level because of barriers pertaining to social and cultural norms.

Contact Base in collaboration with the US Consulate General Kolkata and IIMCIP-Assam Startup Nest orchestrated a workshop “Mentoring Networks for Women led start-ups” on June 28, 2022 at Guwahati, Assam. The objectives were to understand mentoring needs and challenges of women led start-ups, share information on accessing funding and financial resources, engage stakeholders in entrepreneurship development ecosystem in supporting mentoring network and launch a mentoring platform for women led startups.

Business leaders from selected domains, professors, incubation heads, investors, financial advisors, entrepreneurs from North Eastern region of the country interacted with a group of women founders and leaders. The speakers discussed about the trusted avenues to acquire fund for specific business, the appropriateness of finance, ways to pitch start-up ideas to investors, importance of building women mentorship networks and the ways to scale early stage business ventures. They covered various areas of starting up a venture from scratch, shared their challenges and success stories, retailing, finances amd a lot more. The start-ups were from a wide variety of domains including agrotech, ed-tech, food, textile, handicraft, travel, and tourism.

Key Take aways for early stage women led startups:

1. Need to increase knowledge of funding sources, maintaining book of accounts and managing finances
2. Explore more retail and E-Commerce options as selling channels
3. Seek mentoring support from experts as guidance to strategically investing finances
4. Develop a business model, strategize as per risks involved
5. North Eastern region has lot of untapped protection for business growth and expansion
6. Documentation of finances, marketing and business needs to be in place.

Funding for early stage start-ups:

“When one goes big, one can do more”

The first and foremost reason why start-up ventures need funding is to cover up their capital cost. When you seek funding from a specific organisation the value of your venture increases, attracts attention in the market, gains trust of potential customers and provides you a linkage to the community and network. Entrepreneurship has taken a new turn in the minds of the present generation, and it being one of the most discussed topics in the modern day and age, various venture capitalist organisations have come into action.

Nickson Sharma of North East venture Fund (NVF) shares “there is a lack of knowledge when it comes to finances and managing funds, even when they follow a step by step process in building the company by many start-ups. Also when it comes to retailing, most of the ventures are stuck with a single retail platform despite having the option of retailing in various platforms at the same time, hence increasing the sales”.

To avail funding support connect with NorthEast Venture Fund (NVF)

NVF is a 100 crore fund working with early and growth stage start-ups. It is associated with the Ministry of Development of the North Eastern Region and was launched by the North Eastern Development Finance Corporation Limited (NEDFi)

NVF is focused on investing in different technology based sectors like heath technology, education technology, food processing, food technology etc.

Mission is to improve entrepreneurship, equity funding, start-ups, and technology innovation in the region of North East India.

It mainly focuses on investing in enterprises and providing resources for entrepreneurs to maximise their investment return.

They have invested in 51 ventures in the last 5 years, where around 15 of them were women led companies. They have invested in Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram.

NVF also helps entrepreneurs connect with the previous ones who had already worked with them, helping them build communities.

Mentoring support by 100X VC

100XVC is a venture capitalist organisation working with various startups of diverse portfolios.

With financial support 100XVC also invests in marketing, HR, management specifically of a potential company. They also provide mentoring support to the ventures on how to strategically invest in various areas and what business model will work with respect to their product or service.

Scaling up

It is seen that most of the local based startup ventures come up with traditional products, so how much are they interested in becoming a huge brand?

It’s not about the interest but to see if the ventures have the resources or the knowledge to do it in a much wider perspective.

The easiest and the most effective way to make a product known in the market is to sell it online, as the internet is something which is accessible to all.

Before selling something online, the entrepreneurs have to keep in mind that there is going to be a demand in the market, when there is demand there will be a need for upscaling. If the cost of capital is high, and the venture is not able to increase the next round of investment, then scaling up is of no use. So rather than fundraising, they should go for equity funding as the product needs to be of lower selling price, eventually there will be a higher chance of increased sales. Ms Lipi Panchmiya, analyst in portfolio management and research 100 X VC mentions that to grow business one needs to expand contact and network. This can only happen when some one stays in the same industry for several years. Therefore it is essential that an entrepreneur works in the industry, connects with people and then build contact over the years. Ventures also need to identify gaps they want to address and that can only happen when they understand and explore the market.

She further says “North East has a huge potential in going big online because of their diverse features that are present with respect to tourism and handicrafts, and it is seen that potential customers are interested in owning something which originates from the North-east. Various E-commerce websites give space to these ventures to put their product online, where they are able to sell nationally and internationally as well”.

Early stage start-ups need to prepare the following points in order to apply for investment for scale up:

1. Company Summary
2. Pain Points of the idea
3. Solutions proposed
4. Platform/ Product Description or Product Demo
5. Traction, Expertise, Management Team
6. Key Stakeholders (Investors, Advisors)
7. Market Opportunity, Size and Market Analysis
8. Market Approach and Strategy
9. Customers/Clients,
10. Business and Revenue Model
11. SWOT Analysis
12. Customer acquisition strategies
13. Competitor Analysis
14. Projected Financials
15. Fund Utilisation
16. Road ahead/ Exit Strategy
17. Monitoring of the portfolio companies

Access and maintaining finances

Ventures that have an annual turnover around 30 to 40 lakhs often fail to maintain the book of accounts properly. To get funding, one has to maintain the following:

1. Book of accounts need to be properly maintained, mentioning the returns,
2. To keep track of the balance sheets, documentation, marketing expenses from day one.
3. Ventures that are based on proprietorships must focus on making their company a Private Limited. To get venture capitalist funding they should be having shares, so to have shares they should register for a pvt. Ltd. company.

Mr. Subir Singha, Head of Operations in National Rural Economic Transformation Project (NRETP) says “Transparency is the key to get funding”.

Quick Glance on Funders:

NRETP helps these ventures approach various venture capitalist organisations and mentor them about the criterias they have to fulfil to get funds.

Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL) is a public sector company, providing funds as a grant. NRL has funded around 37 ventures out of which 14 start-ups are led by women. They have given around 8.5 crs out of the 10 crs fund that they have, 4crs out of the 8.5 crs is funded to women entrepreneurs. So the money that has been already granted to the existing 37 startups, now have a value around 400+ crs in total, out of 180 crs which is 45% of the total value comes from companies led by women.

The Startup India program has a criteria that it is compulsory for the companies to get 3% of women led start-up ventures.

Connecting Mentors with women led start-ups through a Platform

Addressing the plight of first generation women entrepreneurs we have launched a mentorship platform (www.women4economy.net) to connect domain specific mentors with women founders and leaders. At the early stage of business critical mistakes can be avoided by working closely with people who have gone through the process or are well aware of it. Drawing up the right set of contracts is critical to any business, and access to a mentor network can make life easy for an entrepreneur.

Who can be a Mentor? An entrepreneur, a professional engaged in management consulting, tax, corporate law, accounting, an academician, a business incubator head, industry expert, business gurus with years of experience in guiding start-ups or business enthusiasts

Benefits of a mentor

• Giving back the knowledge gained to the next generation
• Sharing success and failure stories can guide first generation women start-ups
• Engagement with an exciting group of entrepreneurs with new ideas

Benefit for Start-ups

The network aims to provide seamless access to domain specialists, financial advisors, statutory compliance professionals and entrepreneurs and de-bottleneck growth impediments for start-ups. Some of the benefits will be access to sector specific mentors, support to test proto-type, information on funding sources etc.

Incubation/Hubs any early stage start-up can connect with

The Hub Jorhat, (NEATeHub) Assam Agricultural University’s Agri Technology Business Incubator (an Atal Incubation Centre), IIMCIP Assam Startup nest, Technology Incubation Center, IIT Guwahati, Guwahati Biotech Park, Indian Institute of Entrepreneurship (IIE), IIMCIP- Nagaland, IIMCIP- Arunachal Pradesh, 100x VC