Women's digital empowerment: An economic imperative for India's growth

India is home to 63 million MSMEs, with nearly 20% owned by women. Yet the promise of women-led enterprise remains largely unrealized. About 95.6% of these businesses operate in the informal sector, often home-run and micro in scale, invisible to digital markets and formal financial systems despite their economic contributions.Barriers include limited access to credit, lack of digital skills, restricted mobility, and unpaid care responsibilities. Yet women-owned MSMEs demonstrate higher repayment rates and create 11% more jobs for women, reflecting both untapped potential and proven reliability.This Women Entrepreneurship Day, the focus must shift from celebration to systemic action. The question is no longer whether women entrepreneurs can drive India's growth, but how we can leverage technology to allowthem to do so at scale.

Digital tools provide the most scalable solution by transcending geography, enabling flexible access, and connecting women to markets and finance that were previously out of reach.

For entrepreneurs operating from small towns and villages, this infrastructure becomes the bridge between isolation and opportunity.Untapped Economic ValueThe economic case for supporting women entrepreneurs extends far beyond inclusion metrics.

Integrating an additional 68 million women into the workforce could boost India's GDP by USD 0.7 trillion, while accelerating women's entrepreneurship at scale can create 150 to 170 million jobs.Women-owned businesses generate more local employment, especially for other women, and channel earnings back into their neighbourhoods. They demonstrate stronger repayment discipline and build economic resilience at the community level, creating stability that reaches beyond individual balance sheets.Targeted support could catalyze over 30 million new women-owned enterprises. This goes beyond simply adding businesses to the economy. It means activating an engine that drives inclusive growth while strengthening local markets. The challenge lies not in proving the economics, but in creating the conditions that remove the barriers that currently hold them back.Breaking Down the BlocksConsider a woman running a handloom business in rural Odisha.

She owns a smartphone but uses it only for calls. In fact, only 54% of women aged 15 to 49 own a mobile phone compared to 91% of men, limiting their access to digital markets, training, and formal financial services.Even when women do have devices, financial access remains elusive. Nearly 90% of women entrepreneurs rely entirely on personal savings to fund their businesses. With only 13% of women owning houses independently, they lack the collateral that traditional lending requires.

For many, this means business growth depends on what they can save and not what their businesses could potentially generate.These barriers operate within broader social constraints. Household responsibilities, mobility restrictions, and social norms limit how much time and autonomy women can dedicate to their enterprises. In about 20% of cases, male family members effectively control businesses registered in women's names.

A woman may own her business on paper, but whether she can independently make decisions often depends on factors beyond her control.

These barriers compound to limited device access, restricting digital learning, preventing access to formal finance and keeping businesses informal and small.The policy landscapeIndia has established a substantial policy framework to support women entrepreneurs. Schemes such as Stand-Up India, PMEGP, and the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana (PMMY) include targeted provisions for women.

In FY 2023-24 alone, PMMY disbursed ₹2.22 lakh crore to 4.24 crore women entrepreneurs. Platforms like the Women Entrepreneurship Platform offer access to hundreds of government schemes designed to simplify navigation and support.Despite this, 95% of women entrepreneurs remain unaware of the support mechanisms available to them. This gap reflects deeper design issues: only 7% of state-level schemes are exclusively for women, and just 7.6% of gender-neutral schemes include additional benefits for them.

The disconnect between policy intent and ground reality reveals that simply having schemes isn't enough when they don't reach the women who need them most.The infrastructure exists, but the last-mile delivery mechanisms – awareness, accessibility, and design that accounts for women's constraints – remain underdeveloped. Building these mechanisms becomes essential for converting policy into impact.From policy to practiceTransformation begins with hands-on training that introduces women to digital tools as business assets. Training must go beyond basic device usage to include UPI payments, digital recordkeeping, and online customer engagement.

When delivered through one-on-one support in local languages, digital transaction adoption can grow from 30% to over 80%.This digital foundation unlocks financial access through innovative mechanisms that work around traditional collateral constraints. Joint Liability Groups formalize women's participation while building collective creditworthiness. The digital transaction histories they create prove repayment discipline, opening access to working capital through schemes like Mudra and Udyam.

Alternative lending platforms like RangDe and MeraBill further expand options by recognizing digital transaction patterns as creditworthiness, addressing the collateral gap.Financial stability and digital confidence together enable market expansion. Onboarding onto platforms like ONDC and social commerce channels connects businesses to customers beyond local boundaries, while support in pricing strategies and digital marketing helps women compete effectively in these new spaces.

This enables women to move into higher-value economic roles where their skills command better compensation.Peer mentorship networks multiply this impact organically, as successful entrepreneurs guide others and transition into community leadership roles. Women move from being producers to decision-makers, building leadership capacity that compounds across their networks and communities.The approach succeeds when systems are designed around women's existing realities rather than imposing structures that demand wholesale life reorganization.Turning potential into progressWomen's entrepreneurship isn't a welfare issue but a strategic driver of national economic growth. When support systems work effectively at scale, women shift from borrowers to builders. This transformation creates compounding benefits. Women's control over business income changes not just their own economic trajectory but shapes how families invest in the next generation. The opportunity to activate this growth engine is immediate. What determines success is whether interventions reach women systematically, not sporadically, turning isolated successes into sustained transformation across communities.By: Jyoti Sharma, CEO, Nasscom Foundation