Ask most people to picture an Indian business leader and they’ll probably imagine a man in a boardroom. The reality has been changing for a while, and the numbers show it.
More Indian women are working than at any point in recent years. Female labour force participation went from 23.3% in 2017-18 to 40% in 2025, which means roughly 20 crore women aged 15 and above are now employed.
A lot of that growth comes from women starting their own enterprises. About 3.69 crore registered MSMEs are women-owned, around 38% of the total, and MSMEs as a whole contribute close to 30% of GDP and 45% of exports.
The top end looks different too. India’s 117 most influential women collectively control ₹39 lakh crore, and 84% of them built their positions themselves rather than inheriting them. Falguni Nayar built Nykaa, Radha Vembu helped grow Zoho, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw founded Biocon, and Jayshree Ullal runs Arista Networks. Their stories matter beyond the balance sheets, because they show younger women, in small towns as much as in big cities, that building something of your own is a realistic path.
There is still a long way to go, though. Women-led startups make up only about 7.5% of active startups in India, and they have collectively raised $26.4 billion. The much larger figure of 1.07 lakh startups with a woman director or partner sounds better than it really is, since it doesn’t tell you who is actually running the company.
The payoff for closing the gap is real. If female participation reached 50%, in line with global peers, GDP could grow by an extra 1.5 percentage points. Schemes like the ₹2.07 lakh crore in credit guarantees for women-owned enterprises are a good start, but access to capital, mentoring and markets will decide how far this goes.
To empower women to build, lead and grow, representation is important. Join us in WER magazine’s November edition as we celebrate Indian women business leaders from across industries and functions. Through in-depth conversations we get to know more about their thoughts, ideas and dreams.
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