Founders: A Her&Now Podcast Her&Now Project, GIZ India and Vaaka Media

In our final episode of Founders, we talk about what it takes to make a dream come to life. Is it having a single-minded focus on the goal? Is it rethinking our relationship with money - how to get it, and how to use it? Or is it the ability to say no - because in the end your entrepreneurial dream is yours alone? In the rollercoaster ride of entrepreneurship, you’ve got to keep your eyes on the goal. And when you fail - pick up, dust off, and start again.

If there’s a word that’s often used to characterise women’s careers it is “interruption”. Starting a business interrupts “life” too. It’s a big disruptive interruption that challenges what many see are the natural order of things for women - getting a steady job, earning a safe and regular income, and the idea of being settled. In this episode we ask, how do women entrepreneurs juggle it all to make it work?

In the first episode of Founders we set the stage by exploring how women are positioned in the economy and in society. When we try to wrap our heads around the challenges women face to participate in the workforce, entrepreneurship can come across as one of the hardest paths a woman could choose. Grit and sacrifice is very normalized in the stories of women’s working lives. But we can’t keep trying to imagine it, we have to learn what it actually takes.

Starting a business is a dream for many. But the word Founder signifies much more. There are thousands of women-led enterprises in India; many of them are small in nature, innumerable households run because of them, but they are rarely “seen” as embodying the entrepreneurial spirit that we think of. Join us as we talk to women from across the country, each at different stages in their entrepreneurial journey, and learn about their work, their lives and what made them want to start businesses.