good evening everyone it’s privileged to
be here today and I talk to you a bit
about women entrepreneurship and my
personal journey so I was born and
brought up in Germany I worked initially
in private equity in London and in the
finance world I did this for about six
years what happened one day is I somehow
you know was sitting in New York luxury
hotel having one of our dinners for the
for the private equity fund I had I was
the only vegetarian in that room and I
was the only one having that meal one
week later I was sick had an abscess in
my liver was you know kind of struggling
to survive luckily you know it all went
you know okay but it was a close call
but I decided on that day that when when
this was happening that if I do survive
this I would want to try to make a
difference my roots were in India so I
used to come every year once a year to
India to meet my extended family my
parents had moved and my grandparents
had moved from the 50s so one thing
which really struck me was the poverty
on the streets and I visited rural areas
and urban areas and this kind of was
something I thought I’ll try to make a
difference and try to I could actually
look at making a difference for what
struck me most is you know the role of
women why women normally are you know
they’re actually natural leaders so I
was kind of wondering on the title of
unconventional women leaders but because
I do believe women are naturally doesn’t
themselves they you know they raise of
families they they lead from the front I
mean especially I mean having grown up
in a European world where it’s kind of
very much balanced and I think well
we’re having a lot of you know kind of
rebalancing of roles now but I think you
know this was kind of natural so what I
saw in India was you know in rural areas
a lot of times this was not the case so
I decided to move to India and try to
make a difference and what we started
looking at was how
we empower women in in rural areas and
and and try to give them a livelihood
and true that try to build their
confidence try to make them changemakers
so that’s what I’m doing today and what
I would talk about is how what are the
learnings over the last seven years so I
moved to in 2011 by you know when we
were focusing on these women so
basically I walk through a few slides so
we came up with over the I mean years we
have now empowered about you know
thousands of women as was mentioned
before but we figured out that there was
a four or five step 5 step framework
which father which is based on the
learnings we have had by dealing with
these women
so the first thing and this is something
which is quite quite interesting I think
when you talk to when I moved here I
talked to a lot of people and they were
kind of saying what are you trying to do
you’re going to villages you will you
know you will encounter a lot of
challenges we talked to you know whether
it’s our funders whether there’s our
different partners and/or NGOs who are
already doing this and they said well
this is not something which is very
difficult you can’t just come from
outside and you know try to you know
give them empower them like this it it
takes years to do this so well that’s
that was the feedback we got so it was a
bit demotivating when we started off but
then you know after some time I think
maybe it was the naivety in a naiveness
of my of mine my colleagues and
co-founders but we said well we believe
that actually we can do this by you know
you know if you talk to the women and
give them some sort of profession which
makes which is respected in the village
so we came up with the idea of you know
giving them a role where they would kind
of help the community improve the
quality of life and this was by giving
them kind of products which are socially
impactful so we looked at what are the
problems in villages and they were
around you know indoor air pollution
they were around access to energy they
were on menstrual hygiene as has been
talked about a lot in the recent movie
Pat man but which has been a common
problem and they were around you know
kind of even women girls going to school
and many things around that so we put
together a portfolio of things they
could do and we after training them we
asked them to do this but
in the first step actually he said well
through this profession we should be
able to give them a respected role in
society and this should give them a
platform so that was the first step so
we said we believe all ourselves that we
can actually do this the second step was
and I give an example here where you
know there’s a lady I quote her name is
Asha she is a widow in a widower
recent widow whose husband you know
passed away recently she is from Bombay
she was from a village in Satara but
lived in Bombay and she moved back with
two little girls so we looked at you
know one of the key learnings was that
we felt that the leadership is within so
if we find the best way to kind of
inspire a woman would be to give her
examples of others who have made it so
we picked this lady we showed her
stories of others who have made it and
you know now this lady is you know she
believed in herself she is now one of
the most respected women in that
community and everyone knows her so the
second step in the framework is
inspiring women to you know kind of
inside out you know kind of move forward
and be confident the third step we came
up with was you have to create an
enabling environment so it means that
you know giving them training giving
them the tools to actually be able to do
this so in our case what we did is we
created a training module which was
exponential so it meant that we would
kind of look at putting them in various
simulations other environments meeting
other peer groups and through that kind
of build our confidence and so there’s
many examples in this as well but
basically it means that you give them
the tools to to kind of work on this the
next one was you know even if you train
a woman you inspire her to do this the
other thing is you actually need to work
on the family so what we found in the
village environment was there’s a lot of
obstacles right so if a woman wants to
step out of the house and this varies
between not in South India you know
mostly the there’s a lot of people who
stop her right so it would be the
mother-in-law if she’s married it would
be the father-in-law
it could be her husband right so I mean
the
key thing to do here is to kind of
figure out how do you convince them
right and this is something you know you
have to do in this process so you cannot
do it fully at the end of the day she
has to do it herself but I mean at least
when we do this we actually kind of talk
to them show them examples and one of
the most amazing examples recently was I
met one of our women entrepreneurs and
she said her husband actually came to me
and said you know I used to be no we
used to be known by my name and the
family but after this experience now
people know me by my wife’s name so
that’s kind of this was the big change
we saw and and I think that was
something which was spectable for the
whole family and that is how you kind of
flip this around so through some of the
activities you can actually achieve that
the other thing which you know is most
important that’s the fifth step in this
is you know how how do you create their
identity so respect for them and again
one of the examples I quote was one of
the ladies we worked with she recently
took her father to Delhi for a speech we
invited her for a Innovation Summit and
she was flying on a she took a plane so
the father basically then after that had
never been on the flight he said my son
has never done this and my daughter has
been able to take me on a flight to date
to Delhi and so these are small things
which kind of help us do this and I
think just to repeat the five steps are
you know believe in yourself and I mean
convince the stakeholders of the program
to be able to do this the second one is
kind of to inspire on women to you know
to to be able to do this with
inspiration that they you know bring out
and their own confidence and and move
forward the third one is to create an
enabling environment in their family
with the family and community the fourth
point is to give them the tools and the
fifth one is to provide them an identity
and recognize their efforts so this is
kind of what we have learned and I
wanted to share this it’s it’s still the
beginning of the journey I mean we have
now reached about 13,000 entrepreneurs
about 10,000 of which are women this is
a
drop in the ocean in India I think we
have still thousands of of number of
women to reach and many I mean the idea
is to you know share this framework with
all of you and see whether it can
inspire others to be able to do
something similar and you know the goal
for us is to reach 100,000 women and
it’s still a very very long time to go
and for us to achieve this but this is a
start and I want to talk to you about
this framework and share and share this
with you thank you very much [Applause]
be here today and I talk to you a bit
about women entrepreneurship and my
personal journey so I was born and
brought up in Germany I worked initially
in private equity in London and in the
finance world I did this for about six
years what happened one day is I somehow
you know was sitting in New York luxury
hotel having one of our dinners for the
for the private equity fund I had I was
the only vegetarian in that room and I
was the only one having that meal one
week later I was sick had an abscess in
my liver was you know kind of struggling
to survive luckily you know it all went
you know okay but it was a close call
but I decided on that day that when when
this was happening that if I do survive
this I would want to try to make a
difference my roots were in India so I
used to come every year once a year to
India to meet my extended family my
parents had moved and my grandparents
had moved from the 50s so one thing
which really struck me was the poverty
on the streets and I visited rural areas
and urban areas and this kind of was
something I thought I’ll try to make a
difference and try to I could actually
look at making a difference for what
struck me most is you know the role of
women why women normally are you know
they’re actually natural leaders so I
was kind of wondering on the title of
unconventional women leaders but because
I do believe women are naturally doesn’t
themselves they you know they raise of
families they they lead from the front I
mean especially I mean having grown up
in a European world where it’s kind of
very much balanced and I think well
we’re having a lot of you know kind of
rebalancing of roles now but I think you
know this was kind of natural so what I
saw in India was you know in rural areas
a lot of times this was not the case so
I decided to move to India and try to
make a difference and what we started
looking at was how
we empower women in in rural areas and
and and try to give them a livelihood
and true that try to build their
confidence try to make them changemakers
so that’s what I’m doing today and what
I would talk about is how what are the
learnings over the last seven years so I
moved to in 2011 by you know when we
were focusing on these women so
basically I walk through a few slides so
we came up with over the I mean years we
have now empowered about you know
thousands of women as was mentioned
before but we figured out that there was
a four or five step 5 step framework
which father which is based on the
learnings we have had by dealing with
these women
so the first thing and this is something
which is quite quite interesting I think
when you talk to when I moved here I
talked to a lot of people and they were
kind of saying what are you trying to do
you’re going to villages you will you
know you will encounter a lot of
challenges we talked to you know whether
it’s our funders whether there’s our
different partners and/or NGOs who are
already doing this and they said well
this is not something which is very
difficult you can’t just come from
outside and you know try to you know
give them empower them like this it it
takes years to do this so well that’s
that was the feedback we got so it was a
bit demotivating when we started off but
then you know after some time I think
maybe it was the naivety in a naiveness
of my of mine my colleagues and
co-founders but we said well we believe
that actually we can do this by you know
you know if you talk to the women and
give them some sort of profession which
makes which is respected in the village
so we came up with the idea of you know
giving them a role where they would kind
of help the community improve the
quality of life and this was by giving
them kind of products which are socially
impactful so we looked at what are the
problems in villages and they were
around you know indoor air pollution
they were around access to energy they
were on menstrual hygiene as has been
talked about a lot in the recent movie
Pat man but which has been a common
problem and they were around you know
kind of even women girls going to school
and many things around that so we put
together a portfolio of things they
could do and we after training them we
asked them to do this but
in the first step actually he said well
through this profession we should be
able to give them a respected role in
society and this should give them a
platform so that was the first step so
we said we believe all ourselves that we
can actually do this the second step was
and I give an example here where you
know there’s a lady I quote her name is
Asha she is a widow in a widower
recent widow whose husband you know
passed away recently she is from Bombay
she was from a village in Satara but
lived in Bombay and she moved back with
two little girls so we looked at you
know one of the key learnings was that
we felt that the leadership is within so
if we find the best way to kind of
inspire a woman would be to give her
examples of others who have made it so
we picked this lady we showed her
stories of others who have made it and
you know now this lady is you know she
believed in herself she is now one of
the most respected women in that
community and everyone knows her so the
second step in the framework is
inspiring women to you know kind of
inside out you know kind of move forward
and be confident the third step we came
up with was you have to create an
enabling environment so it means that
you know giving them training giving
them the tools to actually be able to do
this so in our case what we did is we
created a training module which was
exponential so it meant that we would
kind of look at putting them in various
simulations other environments meeting
other peer groups and through that kind
of build our confidence and so there’s
many examples in this as well but
basically it means that you give them
the tools to to kind of work on this the
next one was you know even if you train
a woman you inspire her to do this the
other thing is you actually need to work
on the family so what we found in the
village environment was there’s a lot of
obstacles right so if a woman wants to
step out of the house and this varies
between not in South India you know
mostly the there’s a lot of people who
stop her right so it would be the
mother-in-law if she’s married it would
be the father-in-law
it could be her husband right so I mean
the
key thing to do here is to kind of
figure out how do you convince them
right and this is something you know you
have to do in this process so you cannot
do it fully at the end of the day she
has to do it herself but I mean at least
when we do this we actually kind of talk
to them show them examples and one of
the most amazing examples recently was I
met one of our women entrepreneurs and
she said her husband actually came to me
and said you know I used to be no we
used to be known by my name and the
family but after this experience now
people know me by my wife’s name so
that’s kind of this was the big change
we saw and and I think that was
something which was spectable for the
whole family and that is how you kind of
flip this around so through some of the
activities you can actually achieve that
the other thing which you know is most
important that’s the fifth step in this
is you know how how do you create their
identity so respect for them and again
one of the examples I quote was one of
the ladies we worked with she recently
took her father to Delhi for a speech we
invited her for a Innovation Summit and
she was flying on a she took a plane so
the father basically then after that had
never been on the flight he said my son
has never done this and my daughter has
been able to take me on a flight to date
to Delhi and so these are small things
which kind of help us do this and I
think just to repeat the five steps are
you know believe in yourself and I mean
convince the stakeholders of the program
to be able to do this the second one is
kind of to inspire on women to you know
to to be able to do this with
inspiration that they you know bring out
and their own confidence and and move
forward the third one is to create an
enabling environment in their family
with the family and community the fourth
point is to give them the tools and the
fifth one is to provide them an identity
and recognize their efforts so this is
kind of what we have learned and I
wanted to share this it’s it’s still the
beginning of the journey I mean we have
now reached about 13,000 entrepreneurs
about 10,000 of which are women this is
a
drop in the ocean in India I think we
have still thousands of of number of
women to reach and many I mean the idea
is to you know share this framework with
all of you and see whether it can
inspire others to be able to do
something similar and you know the goal
for us is to reach 100,000 women and
it’s still a very very long time to go
and for us to achieve this but this is a
start and I want to talk to you about
this framework and share and share this
with you thank you very much [Applause]
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