An empirical analysis of women entrepreneurship—An insight into opportunities and challenges

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to investigate new opportunities encouraging women entrepreneurs to start their own businesses and to explore the various barriers encountered by them during their business journey. Women entrepreneurship is all about women empowerment, this study would help women recognise the oncoming challenges in their businesses and can help them foresee and come up with appropriate solutions. It is important to study women entrepreneurs in modern times and there is a need to carry out appropriate research concerning various problems faced by women entrepreneurs in our country. This study paves the way to explore what opportunities lay ahead for women entrepreneurs. Such a study encourages women to start their own businesses and improve their social and economic standing. The information that will be obtained from this research will serve as guidelines for future businesses, enhance women’s personalities, identify their motivational factors, challenges and opportunities women would encounter in the future, and the requirements of ideal characters of women entrepreneurs, in a more precise manner. With the findings from the research, the profile of women entrepreneurs and the aspiring candidates whose ambition is to become future entrepreneurs could be well defined with a new level of understanding. Depending on the purpose of the study and the nature of the phenomenon, the descriptive design has been undertaken, and quantitative research has been used to make use of survey questionnaires to collect primary data from women entrepreneurs in Mumbai city and convenient sampling has been used in sample design. The empirics were collected by structured questionnaires. The questionnaire measures the opinion of respondents on various factors of entrepreneurial opportunities, challenges, and development in Mumbai city. This research undertook regression analysis showing a perfect positive relationship between the independent and dependent variables, which explains the level of impact due to political, environmental, and financial challenges encountered by women entrepreneurs. Indian women entrepreneurship is becoming one of the fastest-growing sectors, where women can enter and thrive in various business activities. Most women are capable of taking risks, introducing innovations, and managing their businesses with their creative experiences. Whether it is a small enterprise or a big organisation, women can very well build up their entrepreneurial skills and run their businesses efficiently. This study brings out the opportune factors for women to enter new business sectors, exposing the challenges they would face during their business journey, giving them a scope to foresee, explore, and manage confidently such obstacles in the future.