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Enabling Technology for Women Entrepreneurship: A Study

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GF MR
January-June 2019
Enabling Technology for Women
Entrepreneurship: A Study
Vol. 18 Issue-1 (pp. 1-12)
©2019 FMS-Ganpat University
Neetu Jalan
Research scholar of Sangam University Bhilwara, Rajasthan
[email protected]

Vijayendra Gupta
Associate Professor of Sangam University Bhilwara, Rajasthan
[email protected]

Abstract
The new step towards entrepreneurship, innovation and
digital change is accessed to right information and
knowledge. In the present era, women are playing an integral
role in the society whether it is related to business or
household based business acumen. For women
entrepreneurs, digital technology has act as a game changer.
They are communicating and collecting information and
making decisions at business level; which could be beneficial
for our society and also helps in developing the economic
status of our country. This paper codifies the present scenario
of Indian society and will use anecdotes about how women
are contributing in economic development and how the
economy is growing due to it. Decoding the digital
entrepreneurial ventures is as important as decoding Indian
digital consumer for marketing. The main objective of the
study is to invetigate and describes the growth of technology,
increased reliability of business processes and to determine
how women successfully utilised digital tools to enhance their
ventures. The research methodology in the research paper
rooted from exploratory and descriptive research. Various
resources like journal publications, library, the web and
individuals who take account for promoting digital women
entrepreneurship are used for the collection of secondary
data. The outcome of the study will be used to further reuse
and recommend educating and spreading awareness about
the execution of management information system to deal
with the digitally enabled business process.
Keywords: Women Entrepreneurs, Technology,
Entrepreneurship, Ecommerce

66 GFJMR : ISSN 2229-4651

Introduction
E-commerce was inaugurated in the late 19th century to provide advances in the processing of
high volume and value transaction electronically. The EDI (Electronic data interchange) is
known to be the earliest B2B (business to business) application. It was in 1989 when India was
introduced to internet connectivity while in November 1998, India stepped in the reign of
ecommerce when the government regulated ISP (Internet Service Provider). In today’s scenario,
there are so many changes that are taking place day by day. The change which has inuence the
life of an individual or society is technology advancement. This saved the time of today’s
generation like they can ignore standing in long cue for railway tickets, bus tickets etc as they
can book tickets from home any time.
Over the decades, India has proved its command on the digital technologies. There is a chance
that India’s leadership fuels the digitalised economy to serve as a major growth enabler. The
commence of Digital India programme on 1st July 2015 by Mr. Narendra Modi (Prime minister
of India) was operated with the agenda to provide the rural India with high-speed networks,
recover digital literacy and revolution. The vision of digital India programme has led to a major
growth for job opportunity, electronic services, and manufactoring of the products.
Growth of digital entrepreneurship
Digital entrepreneurship grasps all new ventures and transformation of existing business through
novel technologies. According to The PPRO Payments and E-commerce report 2018, India’s
economic growth rate for the year of 2017 is 7.2% and rose up to 7.7% in 2018. From 2014 to
2016, India was the world’s highest rising economy but was overtaken by China in 2017. E-
commerce is growing by 27% per year mostly in purchasing categories which include travel,
clothing and food.
(Source:http://www.paymenteye.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2018/05/PPRO-report_-high-
growth-markets_2018.pdf).
A market research report titled “Internet in India 2017” brought out by Internet and Mobile
Association of India and Kantar IMRB international conrmed that the number of web users in
India is likely to be around 500 million till June 2018.
(Source:https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/internet-users-in-india-expected-to-
reach-500-million-by-june-iamai/articleshow/63000198.cms).
The GSMA’s mobile gender gap report 2018 estimated that there are only 65% of Indian women
who owns mobile and only 8% of them uses the internet and awareness mobile internet among
women is 19%. A lack of awareness for mobile internet is a key barrier to use because it may
harm individuals in monetary terms or social terms.
(Source:https://www.gsma.com/mobilefordevelopment/wpcontent/uploads/2018/04/GSMA_The
_Mobile_Gender_Gap_Report_2018_32pp_WEBv7.pdf).
New dell research ranks city on their ability to foster women entrepreneurship recently released
the report that lists out the top 50 global cities for women entrepreneurs. The Dell we cities 2018
(Technology deep dive) report analysed that Austin, Texas is the top city in the technology pillar
and out of ten cities, six are North American, two European and two Asian. From India
Bangalore and Delhi made it to the chart at the 42nd and 48th position respectively placed
among the ten last cities on the index.
(Source:https://i.dell.com/sites/csdocuments/CorpSecure_Docs/en/T echnology_deep_dive.pdf?n
ewtab=true).
The MasterCard Index of Women Entrepreneurship (MIWE) 2018 found that India was ranked
52nd among 57 countries. The report highlighted that all the 57 countries had some or the others
obstacles for the progress of women entrepreneurship. These obstacles are the lack of social and
culture acceptance due to gender discrimination, issues of access to venture capital and lack of
self beliefs.
(Source:https://newsroom.mastercard.com/wpcontent/uploads/2018/03/MIWE_2018_Final_Rep
ort.pdf)
Categories of Ecommerce business
There are main six types of ecommerce business as following

Table: 1: Types of Ecommerce

ECOMMERCE
B2A | B2B | B2C C2A | C2B | C2C

Source: https://www.kartrocket.com/blog/ecommerce-business-models-types-pros-cons/

B2A (Business to administration): A transaction type where a deal is made between public
administration and companies. It includes dissimilar facilities like employment, social security
and scal measures.
B2B (Business to Business): This kind of ecommerce is regulated between companies including
producers and wholesaler who deal with dealers related to the goods and services.
B2C (Business to Consumer): It is transaction between business and customer who are the end
users of its products or services like online shopping sites and web stores that sell numerous
products useful in the various sections of life.
C2A (Consumer to Administration): It is the electronic transactions carried out between public
administration and individuals like information sharing and distance learning.
C2B (Consumer to Business): This is related to end user or consumer that provides an
organisation with goods and services that may help to gain competitive environment such as the
design elements of company.
C2C (Consumer to Consumer): This facilitates commerce between two customers and the
resulting transactions are operated by a third party which offers an online stage where the
transactions can take place.
Digital awareness program for women entrepreneurs
In 2014, Mr. Narendra Modi (Prime Minister) launched NDLM (National Digital Literacy
Mission) to encourage women to participate in digital awareness program. In digital session,
they provide essential computer skills, information about certain key applications, knowledge
about the usage of internet to accessing data related to schemes and services issued by the
government and also for basic skills of life decision-making, etc.
Government of Rajasthan has commitment to digitally empower every citizen of the state to
develop their quality of life and become innovation and knowledge hub of the country. They
established Rajasthan Digifest (2016) to support and strengthen the technological ecosystem in
the state and in that fest for not just students or entrepreneurs or IT experts can contribute, but
common citizens can benet from and take back a unforgettable experience lled with
knowledge.
The world leading cloud platform, Go daddy (2017) devoted to small and independent ventures
in India is looking for young women who want to learn the prociency required to be online.
The Managing Director and Vice President of Go Daddy, India- Mr. Nikhil Arora informed the
Indo Asian News Service (IANS) that the developing enthusiasm to learn digital skills among
young women is a welcome sign. It has already helped to expertise over 700 professionals in
Pune, Jaipur, Kochi and Ahmadabad.
An introduction of Facebook, social media giant on 17th July 2018 involved in tactical
corporation with the NSDC (National Skill Development Corporation) to encourage youth
entrepreneurs with at least the basic digital skills in India. With regards to this a Digital Literacy
Library was launched to promote the youth in developing the skills required carefully gain from
online technology.
SEWA (Self Employed Women Association) puts in order women-organized workshops that
helps building skills, develop modern skills and traditional practices. It offers a variety of
training projects depending on the needs of women and employment opportunities in the area
like computer and digital literacy, entrepreneurship and business, advanced garment making,
hospitality and housekeeping and many more. It already trained over 10,000 young women in
Rajasthan, Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Delhi, Bihar, West Bengal and Kerala.
NITI Aayog has initiated WEP (Women Entrepreneurship Platform) in March’18 with the
objectives to construct an environment for women across India to realise their aspirations
towards entrepreneurship, scale up initiatives, layout long term strategies for their enterprise and
empower entrepreneurial ecosystem by allowing industry collaborations and peer to peer
connect.
Review of literature
Razak and Amran (2016) explored the issues related to the low involvement of women
entrepreneurs and online business such as low literacy, limited English prociency and lack of
marketing skills and they founded in their research paper that due to the challenge of technology
that continually changed, the training of women entrepreneurs cannot be done just in one pace. It
should be constant, usual observing and online marketing procedures need to be updated fast.
Junare and Singh (2016) determined that technological skilfulness in women entrepreneurs are
lacking but they are aware about the modern technologies that exist in the industry. They have
conrmed that if technological companies regularly offered training to make women
entrepreneurs updated in terms of technological equipments, it may lead to greater success.
Akhter (2017) observed the maintenance of escalation in business with the increasing
advantages of the web and the system of advanced information like ecommerce, business
intelligence etc by the entrepreneurs. He also suggested that the entrepreneurs should posses the
knowledge about the absence of information system leading to a lesser revenue per client, more
probability of getting the customer away and a slow and ineffective business process.
Ukpere et al. (2017) concluded that the usage of technology has become an innovative aspect in
the women entrepreneurs’ daily lives while they are also known to be multi tasking various roles
that are involved on a daily basis. Home managers, procreators and women entrepreneurship are
the different ranges in which women run their own ventures. Technology serves them with the
comfort to efciently manage their daily tasks helping them to be active in their personal and
professional areas of life.
Shamith (2017) focused on Indian women to think about initiating new ventures in the form of
start ups. Through the start up initiative, a long term proposal has been made to get a better
beginning of women entrepreneurship in order to boost economic growth and assist for making
associations stronger globally. If ICT projects are implemented with the right spirit, start up
initiatives will have the power of women entrepreneurship enhancement.
Cesaroni et al. (2017) analysed that the networking abilities in women are more enhanced than
male entrepreneurs and their research has proved that social media might support women to
enlarge their network and may affect women’s circumstances in their personal and professional
life. In developed countries going through socioeconomic disputes, the usage of social network
might allow women entrepreneurs to raise their business competitiveness, effectiveness, and
their worth of life.
Omar et al. (2017) studied on identify the relationship between the factors of digital inclusion
and support system towards the empowerment of women online entrepreneurs and the result
exposed that 76 % of the participants used whatsapp as the main Internet application in running
their business and communicating with their customers and suppliers through online it mean that
the entrepreneur can stand by itself and strengthen their relationship socially or personal
whenever the business that being performed has developed well through interaction and
communication on the powerful Internet access.
Podile (2018) highlighted on the proposals of digital India for socioeconomic liberation of
women entrepreneurship. He found out that the digital India programme assures transforming
India to a society empowering digitalisation by targeting on digital literacy, resources,
collaborative platforms and different initiatives for the same.
Research Objectives
• To explore and describe how the growth of technology has increased reliability of business
processes.
• To determine the ways in which women entrepreneurs are effectively utilizing digital tools to
enhance their ventures.
Research Methodology
Research design: The researcher aim to explore and describe the growth of technologies that
could be increased reliability of business process and also to determine that how women
entrepreneurs uses digital tools to boost their enterprises.
Method of Sampling: For this research paper, method of sampling is non probabilistic sampling
(convenience sampling) used.
Area of Study: This study is undertaken in the state of Rajasthan, district of Bhilwara.
Sample Size: The sample for the study is thirty respondents, who are actively involved in digital
entrepreneurship.
Data Source: The primary data collected through in-depth face to face interviews were
conducted by the researcher with thirty female entrepreneurs running their own business through
support of technology.
Data collection and Analysis
This paper deals with data collection and analysis of the research on title “Enabling Technology
for Women Entrepreneurship: A Study” is obtained based on sample of 30 respondents and open
ended question were asked such as, how do you manage both your business and domestic
responsibilities? How to utilisation of digital tools for your business transaction or full your
customer’s requirements? Does technology help in your business growth and how? What
problems do you face when you have no knowledge about technology? Almost all the interviews
took place in the participants’ ofce, workplace or home.
Findings
In the present era, technology plays a crucial role in connecting people emotionally and
nancially as well. It has broad in considerable amount of up gradation making tasks like
transaction much efcient and less time taking. Nowadays telecommunication operators are
providing many digital payment applications like Paytm, Phonepe, Gpay, etc. Women are also
making use of it in their daily activities and social platforms like facebook, Whatsapp, etc
encourages women entrepreneurs to get involved in advertising their products and expanding
their ventures. Subjects who could not use technology reported that they waste a lot of time on
work that can be done easily. Also they couldn’t coordinate properly with other dealers who used
digital means. However, respondents who used technology described that they were highly
beneted as they could work at any time and from any place. Some of the common barriers in
accessing technologies like mobile phone, internet and computers were recognized as lack of
skills, absence or poor internet connectivity, lack of upgraded computer system and use of
modern technology like ecommerce etc.
7. Conclusion
The present research attempts to nd out the uses and advantages of technology that increases
expansion and promote enterprises and make women entrepreneurs’ successful. This study
concluded that digitalisation has a very important role in the development of women
entrepreneurs in Bhilwara. The use of advancement in e commerce allows women to explore
different sectors of entrepreneurship and work in the eld they are interested in. It supports more
exibility and less investments for certain task likes marketing, advertising and expanding their
business. Therefore, the advantages of digitalisation should be manifested to all which will
create a better platform for women entrepreneurs leading to a major growth of economy in India.
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