Bengal Leads in Women-Owned MSMEs, Driving Growth for Young Female Entrepreneurs

By: WE staff | Monday, 31 March 2025

• Bengal leads the national tally for women-owned MSMEs accounting for 23.42 percent of the total female-owned enterprises in the country
• Continuous efforts are made toward the overall development of young women entrepreneurs

Bengal has taken the lead in women-owned MSMEs, contributing 23.42 percent of female-owned enterprises. There is a strong, ongoing effort to foster the overall growth and development of young women entrepreneurs in the region.

This was part of a rural women empowerment program and the free training was recently organized at Jhargram for tribal women. Latterly, the Pig Farming Training and Research Institute of India, under the Bharatiya Jana Seva Mission, organized the program for training 40 tribal women farmers and entrepreneurs in the state from Jhargram and West Midnapore.

The program was modified to help the participants from the traditional way of pig rearing towards sustainable commercial pig farming. One of the important objectives of it was to empower and turn those women into new entrepreneurs in the rural areas.

Various essential topics included were: advanced pig farming techniques, breed selection, nutrition management, disease prevention, business planning, and market linkages. Women are guided through every module by expert trainers equipped for both interesting insights and confidence for them to apply in their businesses.

“Our aim is an extended productive livelihood opportunity for rural women. Through equipping them with experiential learning of how to have their own businesses as well as mentorship to have them set up economically viable piggery ventures, we hope they can in turn be fairly able to uplift their entire communities” said Program Coordinator.

Bengal turns into a very vibrant destination for micro small and medium enterprises with more than 3,838 industrial parks across 1,607 acres of land. Besides, 44 new proposals have been accepted by the state government. Women in these regions have further initiated their ventures with various other levels of support.

A total of 2,407 camps have been organized to serve around 4, 24,600 entrepreneurs in the entire state. Further to this, an online single-window platform `Shilpa Sathi' portal-started recently has opened doors to aspiring entrepreneurs searching to start new ventures. It is now available to every district through the helpline,: industry helpline center for new potential entrepreneurs. An amount of Rs. 426 crore has been earmarked under the Bhabishyat Credit Card Scheme for 20000 youths.