How The Era Has Changed For Women Entrepreneurs

Indian beauty industry is growing at a CAGR of 18.6% and is expected to cross Rs. 80,370 crores by 2018. Changes in consumer lifestyle, higher disposable income as well as awareness are some of the drivers for this growth. Inspite this robust growth, the industry is still largely unorganised. Moreover, the biggest challenge for this sector is skilled manpower. It is estimated by 2022, the health and beauty sector alone will require a workforce of 12 million.

Given that the beauty and wellness sector employs more women than men, the industry also has potential to make significant contribution to women empowerment. To this end, the government of India has taken some laudable initiatives under the 'Skill India' mission, helping the beauty and wellness sector become more organized and create a pool of certified and skilled professionals.

Being a women entrepreneur in the late-eighties, trying to scale up in a highly unorganised industry domain like beauty & wellness services was one of my biggest challenges initially. Being in what was largely an unorganized sector, I struggled to raise capital, and banks were apprehensive of something that was hardly deemed as sustainable and scalable. Fortunately, times have changed dramatically, with the Government's proactive push to create entrepreneurship opportunities for by making banking finance more readily available for even the unorganised sector and through initiatives like Start Up India and setting up of industry-led, government backed sector skill councils.

Today, the Beauty & Wellness is one of the key sectors that can provide employment and entrepreneurship opportunities to enhance women's control over financial, human & intellectual resources in society. However, organised players along with government need to build aspiration in the trade and provide support to women entrepreneurs both financially and emotionally.

Back in 2001, when skill development had not acquired the attention it has today, VLCC set up its first training institute for beauty and nutrition to ensure that young people acquired the skills that would help them get jobs and make careers in the beauty and wellness industry. Today, with 80 campuses, the VLCC Institute of Beauty & Nutrition is possibly the biggest chain of vocational education academies in this domain across Asia, where nearly 20,000 students graduate every year. It has trained over 52000+ students under 'Skill India' mission alone.

As the Chairperson of the Beauty &Wellness Sector Skill Council and Founder of VLCC, I can proudly say that we have been successful in creating a foundation for women entrepreneurs. Nearly half the women pass outs from our institutes have already become self-entrepreneurs. Not only that, 95% of staff at VLCC are women, 85% of students population at our institute are women. With such encouraging figures, I can clearly see a remarkable shift towards women contribution in this sector and hope to see more women entrepreneurs contributing to the growth of our country.