Key takeaways
- Skills alone are not enough: Women need market access to customers and reliable markets to turn skills into viable businesses.
- Finance must connect to demand: Loans and capital become meaningful when entrepreneurs have opportunities to sell and grow.
- Market barriers are interconnected: Mobility, unpaid care work, technology, information and social norms can all restrict women’s access to buyers.
- Digital markets offer opportunities, but need support: Smartphones and e-commerce do not automatically translate into successful businesses.
- Success should be measured by outcomes: Sustainable sales, growing incomes, repeat customers and business expansion matter more than simply counting training participants.
For years, the conversation around women’s entrepreneurship in India has focused on a familiar set of solutions limited to the thoughts of providing women with skills, improving access to credit, offering financial literacy and encouraging them to start businesses. While all of these matter, there is another question that often receives less attention — Once a woman starts producing something and begins providing services, who will buy it?
A woman may have the skills to make clothes, process food, provide a service or run a small enterprise. She may even receive a loan to buy equipment and raw materials. But without customers, distribution networks and access to larger markets, that business can remain trapped at the level of a small supplementary income.
This is why market access to women entrepreneurs matters the most. Entrepreneurship is not simply about helping women start businesses, but it is about creating the conditions in which those businesses can survive, generate income and sustain.
Market Access to India’s Large Base of Women Entrepreneurs
Women are already an important part of India’s small-business economy. The Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises (ASUSE) 2023–24 found that women headed 26.2% of proprietary establishments in India’s unincorporated non-agricultural sector, up from 22.9% in 2022–23. The share was particularly high in manufacturing, where women headed 58.4% of proprietary establishments.
These numbers are significant because they challenge the idea that women need to be persuaded to enter entrepreneurship. Many are already doing so, often from homes or very small establishments and with limited resources.
Further, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) estimates that India has around 15 million women-owned MSMEs, more than 70% of which are in the manufacturing sector. Its research also found that around 90% of these women entrepreneurs had not accessed finance from formal financial institutions.
The picture that emerges is therefore more complicated than simply saying women lack entrepreneurial ambition. Women are running businesses, but many remain small, informal and financially constrained.
Can a Loan alone Provide Market Access?
Access to finance is key to having their business grow and expand. A tailor may need a sewing machine, a food entrepreneur may need equipment and packaging, while a small retailer needs working capital. But the capital becomes useful only when there is sufficient demand for what a business produces. This is where market access becomes critical.
A woman selling products only within her neighbourhood is working within a very limited customer base. Reaching a larger market may require connections to wholesalers, organised retail, institutional buyers, online marketplaces or government procurement systems. It may also require knowledge of packaging, branding, pricing, logistics and digital payments.
The IFC’s research on women-owned enterprises in India has specifically examined strategies for improving women’s access to markets. The research highlights the role of corporate sourcing from women-owned businesses and the need to connect women entrepreneurs to larger buyers. This changes the way we think about entrepreneurship programmes. If a woman receives training to make a product but has nowhere reliable to sell it, the intervention has solved only half the problem.
The Barriers are Not only Financial
Market access is rarely an isolated challenge. It is closely connected to mobility, time, technology, information and social norms.
Women who run home-based businesses may have limited opportunities to travel to markets or meet potential buyers. Unpaid care work can reduce the time available for networking, training and business development. Limited access to smartphones, digital platforms and financial services can further restrict their ability to find customers beyond their immediate surroundings.
Further, multiple research around this have identified several interconnected barriers, including lack of collateral, time poverty and inadequate ecosystem support, alongside constraints within financial institutions. This matters because a business does not operate in isolation. A woman entrepreneur may be perfectly capable of producing a good or providing a service, but still struggle to scale because the systems around her do not make it easy to access customers, finance, information or business networks.
Moving beyond the Neighbourhood Market
For many women entrepreneurs, the local market is an important starting point. It provides an accessible customer base and allows them to test products, build confidence and establish relationships. But the local market should not become the ceiling.
Government initiatives have increasingly tried to create pathways from local production to larger markets. The Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises’ MSME Sambandh dashboard records public procurement from women-owned micro and small enterprises by Central Public Sector Enterprises. Procurement from women-owned MSEs rose from INR 2,319 crore in 2022–23 to INR 6,018 crore in 2024–25, while the number of women-owned MSEs benefiting increased from 16,792 to 35,279.
Public procurement can be particularly significant because it provides something many small businesses struggle to obtain — a predictable buyer at a scale beyond individual consumers. Similarly, programmes supporting self-help groups and women-led collectives can help entrepreneurs pool resources, reach larger buyers and reduce some of the costs associated with operating individually.
What Market Access Looks like on the Ground?
Civil society organisations can help bridge this gap because they often work closely with communities where women are beginning their entrepreneurial journeys.
Smile Foundation is one such example, where our Swabhiman programme was initiated to combine entrepreneurship development with financial and digital literacy, business planning, mentorship and market access. Its approach recognises that starting a business is only the beginning.
Swabhiman has reached more than 1.90 lakh women and girls through integrated health, nutrition and livelihood interventions. During 2025, 5,048 women were trained in entrepreneurship and financial literacy, with 116 micro-enterprises established, according to the organisation’s own reporting.
The programme’s focus on market access, such as branding, marketing, e-commerce opportunities, market linkages and exposure to potential customers, is particularly relevant to the wider entrepreneurship debate, besides supporting women in navigating financial and government support systems.
This is an important shift from the conventional idea of vocational training. Teaching a woman how to make something is useful; helping her understand how to price it, find customers, market it, manage finances and build repeat business is what can turn that skill into an enterprise.
Are Digital Markets the Ultimate Solution?
It is true that digital commerce has created new possibilities for small businesses. A woman who once depended entirely on customers in her immediate neighbourhood can potentially reach buyers across a city or even the country through social media, e-commerce platforms and digital payments. However, simply putting women-led businesses online does not automatically make markets accessible.
Digital entrepreneurship requires more than a smartphone. Women may need support with product photography, online catalogues, digital payments, packaging, customer service, logistics and online marketing. They also need time to manage these activities.
Smile Foundation’s work on digital pathways for women entrepreneurs illustrates this broader approach. Its Swabhiman programme combines entrepreneurship and skill development with financial literacy and market-linkage support, including connections to digital buyers. This matters because technology works best when women have the knowledge, confidence and support to use it as a business tool.
Real Measure of Success Comes after Training
While there are ample training programmes organised for women entrepreneurs, they cannot tell us whether an enterprise has become sustainable.
Even if women are trained in abundance, a more meaningful assessment would ask: Are women making regular sales? Are their incomes increasing? Are they reaching new customers? Can they negotiate better prices? Are they reinvesting in their businesses? Are they able to hire other workers? These questions shift attention from activities to outcomes.
A training programme can count the number of participants who complete a course. A financial programme can count the number of loans disbursed. But neither necessarily tells us whether women have gained lasting economic independence. Market access makes that difference visible.
When women can sell consistently, generate revenue and build relationships with buyers, other parts of the entrepreneurship ecosystem become more meaningful. Credit can be repaid and reinvested. Skills can be put to use. Digital tools can become productive assets rather than simply technologies women have been trained to use.
From Creating Entrepreneurs to Building Viable Enterprises through Market Access
The central challenge, then, is not simply getting more women to become entrepreneurs. India already has millions of women running businesses, many of them with limited capital and little formal support. But the challenge is to create an enabling environment in which those businesses can grow.
That means combining skills with finance, finance with business support, and business support with reliable markets. It means connecting women to procurement systems, value chains, digital platforms, networks and buyers.
For organisations working on women’s economic empowerment, this suggests a broader understanding of what entrepreneurship support should look like. The goal should not end with a woman receiving training or starting a micro-enterprise. It should extend to the point where she has the confidence, resources, customers and networks to sustain it.
FAQs
1. Why is market access important for women entrepreneurs?
Market access connects women entrepreneurs with customers, buyers and distribution networks, allowing them to generate regular sales and grow their businesses rather than remaining dependent on small local markets.
2. Is providing skills training enough to support women’s entrepreneurship?
No. Skills training is important, but women also need access to finance, business support, customers, digital tools, networks and markets to turn those skills into sustainable enterprises.
3. What are the biggest barriers to market access for women entrepreneurs?
Barriers can include limited mobility, unpaid care responsibilities, lack of business networks, restricted access to technology and information, inadequate finance and limited connections to larger buyers.
4. Can digital platforms help women entrepreneurs reach larger markets?
Yes, digital platforms can expand a woman’s customer base beyond her immediate community. However, effective digital entrepreneurship also requires support with marketing, product presentation, payments, packaging, logistics and customer management.
5. How can government procurement support women-owned businesses?
Government procurement can provide women-owned enterprises with access to larger and more predictable buyers. The blog notes that procurement from women-owned micro and small enterprises through Central Public Sector Enterprises has increased substantially in recent years.
6. How does Smile Foundation support women entrepreneurs?
Through its Swabhiman programme, Smile Foundation combines entrepreneurship development with financial and digital literacy, business planning, mentorship and market-access support. Its work includes branding, marketing, e-commerce opportunities and market linkages.
7. How should the success of women’s entrepreneurship programmes be measured?
Beyond counting how many women were trained, programmes should examine whether women are generating regular sales, increasing their incomes, reaching new customers, negotiating better prices, reinvesting in their businesses and creating employment.
