– Sheereen Farhana
Women have become independent individuals, unlike those in the old days. The rise in awareness for the need for an independent finance structure is leading women to yield money of their own. While some resort to a 9-5 job, many have taken interest in setting up their own startups.
When we look around, we see a lot of our sisters starting their own businesses, these mostly fall under small and home-based businesses like tailoring, catering, cloud kitchen, bakery businesses, make-up service, mehndi service, home-made haircare and skincare and health products, online tutoring, freelance content writing, digital marketing services, online pages in Instagram and WhatsApp, hand-made articrafts, etc. All these businesses include low to zero investments. It’s practical, efficient and also yields money. These are fast growing businesses with low capital and less labour required, mainly targeted by common women, including housewives.
Here we have some of the well-known largescale start-ups and new age businesses owned by women,
- Nykaa – Falguni Nayar (beauty & fashion retail)
- Biocon – Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw (biopharma)
- V-Mart Retail – Radhika Ghai (co-founder)
- Lenskart – Peyush Bansal’s company has women co-leaders, but many women-led brands exist in retail
- Mamaearth – Ghazal Alagh (personal care)
- Sugar Cosmetics – Vineeta Singh
- Wow Skin Science – Women co-founders involved
- Boat, Plum, Dot & Key – Strong women leadership presence
Further in this article we’ll see about two aspiring women entrepreneurs who set the Indian market industry on fire and made the entire nation and the world turn heads.
Sephora to Nykaa
Falguni Nayar – The founder and CEO of Nykaa also known as FSN E-commerce ventures.
Falguni Nayar comes from a business family where her father ran a small bearings company. He also invested in stocks; so even at a very young age she had entrepreneurship exposure. She recalls her sitting on the table with her father discussing the stocks – where to buy and sell them.
After completing her B.Com from Mumbai’s Sydenham College and an MBA from the prestigious IIM Ahmedabad, she started her career as Managing Consultant and was later raised as the Managing Director at Kotak Mahindra capital.
She dealt with a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs and admired their passion for starting a business. She recalls in an interview that she has always seen the passion and the hope that their business will come true. She always had it in her to start a business on her own. She was sent to the US and UK as an investment banker and was doing a very good job.
Once while she was shopping in the US in Sephora, she noticed how the salesperson showed her the best brands and the best ways to use them. When seeing this she had a spark, there was never like this in India. A business idea was starting to get on her mind.
She wanted to do something very new, something that didn’t exist before. That’s when she noticed a gap in the market where beauty products were going downhill in sales online. Because of all the dominance of duplicates and the sceptical behaviour of the consumers in buying them. She decided to take the BIG step and entered the market just in time when e-commerce was about to burst.
It was indeed a big decision for her to leave behind a lucrative 18-year job and start a business. That too at an age of 50, where people begin to play safe without taking much risks.
Her expertise in financial risks, business, money management and investments helped her understand the market even better.
She left her comfort zone and chased her passion. Her father supported her and gave her a small office, she interviewed employees from her father’s office and hired 3 employees. She along with her 3 employees started Nykaa in Oct, 2012.
When she initially told people about her business idea, they called her ‘crazy’. C’mon who would leave a high paying, profitable and a safe job and go after a start-up? That too from the scratch?
She faced some prominent challenges.
– The investors were sceptical in investing because online ‘beauty’ shopping was new in India back then.
– Big international brands hesitated to partner with them as it was just a start-up.
– And Nykaa had to compete against 2 major e-commerce giants ‘Amazon & Flipkart ‘
Despite all the odds, Falguni Nayar’s startup grew because she had a purpose, and was focused on making all women experience authentic beauty products without any doubts of fake products.
She was able to gain the trust of millions of customers because of the authenticity of the products on her site.
Her binocular focus is getting her business running successfully and for the long term. ‘She believes in team work and gives a great deal of importance in listening and taking advice from her employees’ – says an interviewer.
Efficient use of digital marketing and collaboration with the influencers has taken the business to the next level.
Her words, “Think big, start small” is a powerful statement that now made Nykaa the biggest beauty products platform in India.
She took lessons from her father, gained experiences from her previous jobs and proved that age isn’t a barrier to try something new especially if you have the right resources. She faced the challenges with confidence and with the power of team work, her net worth is now $4.2 billion, making her India’s wealthiest self-made woman.
From ₹10,000 to $6 billion USD
The second woman set biotechnology in India on fire. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, executive chairperson and founder of Biocon Limited and Biocon Biologics Limited.
Kiran comes from a business family as well and her father was a brew master. Kiran very much wished to become a doctor, but she didn’t get a scholarship. So she studied biology and zoology at Bangalore University, earning a B.Sc. (Hons) in Zoology in 1973, then upon her father’s wish she pursued brewing, qualifying as a Master Brewer from Ballarat University (now Federation University), Australia in 1975.
When she came back to India, she had high hopes that she’d get a job but was faced with a big disappointment. That was the age when gender bias was at its peak. Nobody was willing to hire Kiran as a qualified brewer.
She didn’t get to study what she wanted and didn’t get a job despite doing exceptional in her studies.
Determined to work, she went to Scotland and that’s when she came across an Irish biotech entrepreneur Leslie Auchincloss. Looking at her potential, he invited her to be his business partner. Being a chemistry lover, his business idea created a spark. He made enzymes from papaya that could be used in beer, food and textiles. Papayas are well grown in India, so why not try?, she thinks and takes the offer and officially started Biocon’s subsidiary at the age of 25 in a tiny rented garage (used as a lab) in 1978 with ₹10,000!
Of course challenges follow.
– Nobody wanted to work under a female employer. People doubted women’s skills and kept refusing. She recalls in an interview that she would give out fake advertisements and people would come looking for a male chairperson and go back disappointed. Finally she hired 2 about-to-retire car mechanics. She and those about-to-retire car mechanics started producing enzymes.
– She said in an interview that they didn’t even have a telephone, and the fermentation process included machines.
– Importing products in India was very difficult at the time. They somehow imported a photospectrometer. ‘We used this photospectrometer for various purposes even for which this shouldn’t be used’, she added.
– Finance was also a big hurdle. Investors called her business ‘high risk’. The business world was sceptical of a woman entrepreneur.
Everyone had a hard time believing in her. Because a woman’s hard work and innovation was often doubted back then. She turned every hardship into firewood for the passion that was burning inside of her.
She ventured into the uncharted territory with courage and resilience, as biotechnology wasn’t something common in India. Her wish of becoming a doctor is somehow fulfilled, said Kiran in an interview. She added that she was very dejected when she couldn’t get into med school. But now she discusses with a lot of doctors about the needs of the patients and gets to know about the increase in diabetes and is manufacturing quality and affordable healthcare, focusing on biosimilars (like insulins, monoclonal antibodies) and generics for diabetes, cancer, and autoimmune diseases, serving patients in over 120 countries with advanced therapies and research services.
When she was asked how she took the decision to start a Biocon subsidiary when there were very limited resources along with not enough money available at the time, she replied that she was confident about the success. ‘Thinking ahead of the curve and executing on delivery’, was her winning formula. She calls herself rebellious and continuous that she always wanted to differentiate and didn’t want to be a me-too. And importantly her mantra to run a successful business is to have a purpose.
Her firm roots in science, efficient use of available resources and the urge to bring upon change, made Biocon one of the largest fully-integrated, innovation-led biopharmaceutical company in India with net worth over ₹52,000 – ₹53,000 Crore (over $6 billion USD) as of late 2025.
Both the women strove to do something which was new, didn’t hesitate to try and were confident and courageous in building their dreams.
Despite many role model entrepreneurs, most women still face barriers such as access to funding, social norms, lack of government scheme awareness, which overall affects entrepreneurship rates compared to men.
We take lessons from Falguni Nayar and Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and be resilient, confident in growing, shaping and finally taking the big decision.
