Accessing capital still difficult for women entrepreneurs today: Biocon founder Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw

Pune: Even in the present day, women entrepreneurs find it difficult to access capital, Biocon founder and executive chairperson Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw said on Thursday.

“Young entrepreneurs, especially young women entrepreneurs, have great difficulty accessing capital and we must do something about it as business leaders,” she said, while addressing a gathering in Pune at a scholarship programme for women in core engineering initiated by the Bajaj Auto Foundation.

Highlighting her own journey, Mazumdar-Shaw shared that when she started Biocon from a small setup, she had to work hard at establishing credibility with everyone.

“First and foremost, recruiting was a challenge for me. Also, banks did not want to lend to me as they saw me as high risk and with no collateral to offer. Even suppliers did not want to deal with a woman and asked if they could speak to a manager,” she said.

“For the country to fulfil its aspirations of becoming an innovation and manufacturing hub, it has to tap into its full potential and utilise all talent. This is why women’s participation in engineering becomes that much more important,” Mazumdar-Shaw added.

Also speaking at the event, Bajaj Auto managing director (MD) Rajiv Bajaj said that when he joined the company in 1990, there were only two women employees who were counsellors there. But now, 20% of the total workforce is women.

“When we started our new plants in Chakan, our direction to ourselves was that at least 50% of the workforce should be women. In the newer plants, I think 25% employees are women. At one of the plants, one assembly line for big motorcycles was operated 100% by women,” he said.

The Bajaj Auto Foundation, the corporate social responsibility (CSR) arm of Bajaj Auto, has announced a commitment of Rs400 crore over the next decade to provide scholarships to women engineers through the Rupa Rahul Bajaj Scholarship for Women in Engineering programme. Under the initiative, scholars will receive financial support of up to Rs8 lakh across the course of their engineering education at 40 leading engineering institutions.