Women's Day and Women-Owned Business Statistics

March 8, we’ll be celebrating yet another International Women’s Day. It’s been 110 years now since the first Women’s Day in 1909, and the number of women-owned startups and entrepreneurs has risen steadily. As a matter of fact, women now regularly achieve the same incredible startup success and high-profile exits that every startup founder dreams about.

The rights and trail-blazing roads that the Women’s Rights Movement has won and paved for its budding entrepreneurs is commendable, and worth looking at, by the numbers.

Women-Owned Business Statistics

1. 14% – Number of businesses (over 8 million) run by women entrepreneurs in India. (source: 6^th economic census report, data from National Sample Survey Organisation)

2. Nearly 14% – Number of women-run businesses (over 1 million) in Tamil Nadu – the state that leads India in terms of women-owned startups. (source: NSSO)

3. Nearly 7% – Number of women-run businesses (over half million) in Karnataka. (source: NSSO)

4. Nearly 60% – Over 4.8 million of these are women from SC/ST and OBC. (source: NSSO)

5. 79% – Number of women-owned businesses (over 6 million) that are self-financed. (Source: NSSO)

6. 4.4% – Have raised debt funding through private lenders or government loans and grants.

7. 14 million – Number of people employed by women-owned businesses in India.

8. 27% – Number of women in the Indian labour force.

Women Owned Startup Funding

9. $242.7 million – Funding raised by startups with at least one woman as a founder. (source: YS Research)

10. $100 million – Largest funding round raised by a company (Shopclues) with at least one woman as a founder. (source: YS Research)

11. Up to 60 percent – Increase in GDP (up to $2.9 trillion more) if women and men are on par in India’s economy. (source: McKinsey Global Institute)

12. 15% more profitablity – Result of going from 0 to 30% share of women in corporate leadership positions. (source: Peterson Institute for International Economics)