The definitive list of women entrepreneurs in India

Startups, Make In India, and entrepreneurship, in general, made news this year, especially with the governments at both the State and Central level rooting for entrepreneurs. The allocation of Rs 200-crore budget by the Modi government towards the empowerment of women was also welcome news.

With the hope that this will encourage more women to join the workforce in the coming years, we celebrate some women entrepreneurs of India who as leaders and technologists stand as great role models for others to follow suit.

Aditi Avasthi is the Founder and CEO of Embibe, a Mumbai-based edtech startup that was backed by Kalaari Capital and LightBox Ventures. The venture combines technology and data sciences, and helps students prepare better for complex competitive exams. Earlier this year, Embibe acquired 100Marks, a Morpheus Gang company started in April 2012 to help students crack the IIT JEE, one of the most rigorous entrance tests globally.

Read the story here.

Aditi Chaurasia is the Co-founder of EngineerBabu, a company that provides end-to-end IT services, from designing to maintenance. They are into Android and iOS app development, web design and development. Based out of Indore, Aditi started the venture in 2014 but decided to keep it under wraps to avoid being stonewalled by the pressure of a marriage and a job.

Read the story here.

Aditi Gupta, Founder of Menstrupedia, is shattering the taboos surrounding menstruation in the society. She started her venture in 2012 to provide informative content to girls and women and to act as a friendly guide during their period.

Read the story here.

Ajaita Shah is the Founder and CEO of Frontier Markets founded in 2010. Based in Rajasthan, the venture connects base of pyramids (BOP) households in India with high quality and affordable products. Cognisant of the barriers to BOP market entry, it has established an innovative approach to address these challenges. Ajaita holds a B.A. in International Relations from Tufts University and has been a catalyst in helping scale clean energy access globally.

Read the story here.

Amna Abbasi is the Founder and CEO Etashee, an online portal where one can sell new and unused apparel. Amna started up in November 2014 and has already raised Rs five crore from a Delhi-based business group. Currently, she has an 18-member team spread across Noida and Delhi.

Read the story here.

Anisha Singh is the Co-founder of mydala, which provides deals to customers in a group setting. Started in 2009, the company is headquartered in Delhi. This is Anisha’s second company. She started her first one is USA which provided digital content to US companies.

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Ankita Tandon is the Co-founder of CouponDunia an online platform for connecting consumers with retailers in 2012.

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Anu Acharya, Founder and CEO of MapMyGenome, embarked on her entrepreneurial journey in 2000 and founded MapMyGenome in 2011 to promote ‘better health for Indians using technology’. The aim was to instill a healthier life by evaluating an individual’s genetic report and health history and combining it with genetic counselling. Earlier this year, the venture raised $1.1 million from a group of angel investors.

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Anu Sridharan is the CEO of NextDrop, a social enterprise that lets urban residents track availability of piped water. NextDrop was launched in 2011, first operating in Hubli-Dharwad, the twin cities in Karnataka. Anu holds a Bachelors and Master degree in Civil Engineering from University of California and Berkeley.

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Anupama Panchal is the Co-founder and CTO of Ahmedabad-based Gridle.io started in 2011. The company provides a cloud-based productivity platform defining the future of teamwork. Combining functionality with ease of task management it powers people by eliminating complexity of multiple platforms.

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Arpita Ganesh, known as the Indian Bra Queen, founded Buttercups in 2008. A lingerie company that helps women find their right size through personalised fitting and retailing lingerie online, it raised angel funding from Kanwaljit Singh, Angie Mahtaney and others. This Bengaluru-based company was earlier crowd-funded given its large customer base.

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Aruna Schwarz is the Founder and CEO of Stelae Technologies, a software vendor providing automated conversion solution for multiple categories of content. Based in Chennai, it was started in 2002.

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Ashwini Asokan is Co-founder of Mad Street Den, which offers Artificial Intelligence and computer vision as a plug-and-play solution to businesses around the world. With offices in San Jose and Chennai, the company raised a funding of $1.5 million from Reservoir Investments’ Exfinity Fund and GrowX ventures in January this year.

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Chitra Gurnani Daga with her husband, Abhishek Daga, founded Thrillophilia in 2009. Headquartered in Bengaluru, it is an adventure travel company. Chitra, who is the Co- founder and CEO, has an MBA from ISB, Hyderabad and has previously worked at SAP. In 2013, the venture received a seed investment of $200,000 from Hyderabad Angels, iLabs Venture Capital Fund, Navlok Ventures and CII (IIM A).

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Debdutta Upadhaya is the Co-founder and CEO of Timesaverz. Founded in 2013, it helps users hire locally verified and curated service providers through the push of a button. In other words, it is a marketplace of services. This year in August, it announced receiving $2.5 million Series A funding from Ronnie Screwvala’s investment arm Unilazer Ventures.

Read the story here.

Falguni Nayar is the Founder of Nykaa, an online beauty retailer focussed on beauty and wellness products. The investment-banker-turned-entrepreneur started the venture in 2012. The venture raised close to $9.5 million from a group of affluent Indian investors this year.

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Garima Satija is the Co-founder of PoshVine, which allows users to provide their loved ones with unique experiences – be it culinary classes, travel, workshops or treks. Before starting PoshVine, Garima worked with Naukri.com and Ozone Media.

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Gauri Jayaram is the Founder of Active Holiday Company, an international adventure tour company that specialises in guided and self-guided adventure holidays. This is her second venture, which she started in 2013.

Read the story here.

Hemalatha Annamalai spent the last 15 years creating and driving entrepreneurial ventures, and in 2007 she founded the with seed money of Rs 50 million. The company designs and manufactures a wide range of reliable, cost-effective and quality Electric Vehicles for providing economical, comfortable, stylish and well-performing electric mobility solutions for all categories of people and businesses in Asia and beyond.

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Kanika Jain is the Co-founder of SquadRun, a crowdsourcing platform that connects business to a smartphone-enabled workforce. Started in 2014 and one of YourStory’s MobileSparks, the startup has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from some of the top entrepreneurs in India such as Amit Ranjan of Slideshare, Deepinder Goyal, Founder of Zomato, Zishaan Hayath, Founder of Toppr and Girish Khera, Co-­founder at Scientific Animations.

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Kanika Tekriwal is the Founder of JetSetGo, the marketplace for private jets, helicopters and air ambulance. This entrepreneur fought cancer and is a relentless pursuer of hope and positivity. This year, JetSetGo raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Yuvraj Singh’s startup fund YouWeCan Ventures.

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Kavita Jain is the Co-founder of WAGMob started in 2010 and is headquartered in Indore. The company was initially building consumer-facing apps in the field of education. A YourStory TechSparks company, it created more than 400 apps with a team in Indore.

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Lisa Srao is the Chairman and Managing Director of I Brands Beverages Ltd, an alcohol manufacturing company that she founded in 2010 with the aim to make products of international standard quality in terms of blend, design, look and feel, affordable to consumers.

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Liya Verghese and Harsha Thachery are Founders of MasalaBox, a marketplace that connects home chefs with customers. They started up in 2014 at Cochin and now have operations in Bengaluru too. The two women have been friends and realised they had common interests.

Read their story here.

Malini Aggarwal started with a blog in 2008. Called MissMalini, it addresses the appetite for Bollywood, fashion, and lifestyle news and analysis with a voice that represents the new, young and global Indians.

Read the story here.

Manisha Raisinghani leads the technology and product side at LogiNext Solutions. She co-founded the company in 2014 which recently secured a $10-million Series A from Alibaba-backed Paytm.

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Meena Ganesh is the CEO of Portea, a home-focussed healthcare platform http://yourstory.com/2015/12/portea/that she co-founded with her husband in 2013. This year, the company raised a $37.5-million Series B round led by existing investor Accel and International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group; Qualcomm Ventures, and Ventureast.

Read the story here.

Naiyya Saggi is the Co-founder of BabyChakra, an online platform that connects parents to services and products to make parenting a less tedious affair. Founded in 2014, the Mumbai-based company raised $600,000 from Mumbai Angels, Patni Family Office and Singapore Angel Network.

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Neeru Sharma is the Co-founder of Infibeam, an Ahmedabad-based e-commerce platform. In June this year, the company issued draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) to raise Rs 450 crore at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and National Stock Exchange (NSE).

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Neetu Bhatia is the Co-founder and CEO of KyaZoonga. Headquartered in Mumbai and launched in 2007, KyaZoonga is an entertainment and sports ticketing company. An investment-banker-turned-entrepreneur, Neetu holds an MS in Management and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Neha Behani is the Co-Founder of Moojic, an in-store radio service for local stores. The startup allows customers to interact with playlists from the locations they have signed up from. Started in 2013, Moojic obtained funds worth $50,000. Moojic closed a small round of Rs 25 lakh in 2013. Investors include Ravi Gururaj, Rajan Anandan, Pankaj Jain and Ramesh Shah.

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Neha Motwani is the Founder of Fitternity. In July this year, Mumbai-based fitness discovery and marketplace platform Fitternity Health E-solutions raised pre-Series A investment of $ one million, led by Bengaluru-based Exfinity Venture Partners, a fund formed by industry veterans like TV Mohandas Pai, Balakrishnan V, Girish Paranjpe and Deepak Ghaisas.

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Nidhi Agarwal is the CEO and Founder of KAARYAH, an online brand of women’s western wear. Founded in 2014, the venture raised pre-Series A investment from T V Mohandas Pai and The Saha Fund. Ratan Tata has also invested in the venture in his personal capacity.

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Nimmi Cherian is the Co-founder of Daily Rounds founded in 2014. This Bengaluru-based startup is building an academic network of doctors through its mobile app, and raised a seed round of $500,000 earlier this year from Kae Capital, Teruhide Sato and GSF.

Read the story here.

Pankhuri Shrivastava is the Co-founder and CMO of GrabHouse, a community-based online exchange for finding rented accommodation. Launched in July 2013, the company has closed a Series A funding of $2.5 million from Kalaari Capital and Sequoia Capital. Previously, it had raised $500,000 from India Quotient.

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Pranshu Bhandari is the Co-founder of Culture Alley, a web-based platform to learn languages launched in 2012. Pranshu graduated from NMIMS, Mumbai.

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Preeta Sukhtankar is the Founder of The LabelCorp, which has been rebranded as The LabelLife. It was set up in 2012 as an online retail brand where celebrity creative directors curate products. The venture received $1-million funding in 2013 from Kalaari Capital.

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 Prukalpa Sankar is the Co-Founder of Social Cops, http://social.yourstory.com/2013/04/get-your-civic-problems-fixed-at-the-comfort-of-home-via-socialcops/founded in 2012. It is a technology data company that aims to power decision-making through high quality data sourced from the grassroots. It raised $320,000 in seed funding from 500 Startups, Rajan Anandan (MD, Google India) and Manoj Menon (MD, Frost & Sullivan APAC) in 2014.

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Pooja Warier is the Co-founder and Director of UnLtd India, a launchpad for social entrepreneurs in India. Headquartered in Mumbai it was founded in 2007.

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Priyanka Gill and Namrata Bostrom founded POPxo in 2014. A community and digital media platform catering to young women, the company recently raised $2 million in Series A funding led by IDG Ventures India and Kalaari Capital with participation from 500 Startups. In November 2014, the duo had raised Rs 3 crore from Rajan Anandan, CaratLane’s Mithun Sancheti (via Chennai Angels), and others.

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Priya Maheshwari is the Co-founder of Properji, a real estate research analytics startup.

Started in 2013, it is based in Bengaluru.

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Priti Shah is Co-founder and CEO of Paynear Solutions, which provides end-to-end merchant-centric solutions to aid store management, active customer engagement, rewards and sales tracking, apart from payment acceptance. Recently, it raised $2.5 million as part of its $10-million fund raising plan. Founded in 2013, it raised the money from serial investor Mitesh Majithia.

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Priti Sawant is the Founder of JoulestoWatts a staffing solution firm, which she describes as a ‘talent collaboration platform’. Founded this year, the company received funding from SAHA Fund, an investment firm led by women and for women, and the Manipal Global Education Services.

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Priyanka Agarwal and Anshulika Dubey are the founders of Wishberry, a crowdfunding website based in India and started in 2012. The company has raised funding of $650,000 from investors including Rajan Anandan, Sharad Sharma, and Shankar Mahadevan.

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Pallavi Gupta is the Co-founder of Mast Kalandar. In 2006, Pallavi and her husband Gaurav Jain quit their IT jobs to start a restaurant. In a few years, its popularity grew exponentially and is now spread across multiple cities, with most number of outlets located in Bengaluru.

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Pramad Jandhyala is the Co-founder of Latentview, a data analytics and data management firm. Founded in 2006, the company is headquartered in Chennai.  

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Radhika Ghai Aggarwal is the Co-Founder and CMO of ShopClues, a marketplace that connects buyers and sellers online. Founded in 2011, the company raised over $100 million in Series D earlier this year. Funded by institutional investors, it is an Indian subsidiary of Clues Network Inc., a US Corporation, and is based out of Gurgaon.

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Rashmi Daga is the Founder and CEO of FreshMenu founded in 2014. The Bengaluru-based startup is part of serial entrepreneur Krishnan Ganesh and Meena Ganesh’s startup factory GrowthStory.

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Richa Kar is the Co-founder and CEO of the online lingerie retailer Zivame founded in 2011. This year, the company raised a Series-C round of Rs 250 crore from Zodius Technology Fund and Khazanah Nasional Berhad, the strategic investment fund of the Government of Malaysia. Existing investors Unilazer, IDG Ventures and Kalaari Capital also participated in the round. Zivame’s Series B round was worth $6 million led by Unilazer.

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Renu Bisht and Pragya Upadhyay are the founders of Vanity Cube, a Delhi-based on-demand beauty company that delivers doorstep service. Founded in 2014, they have not disclosed their funding.

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Rashi Menda, Founder and CEO of Zapyle is a portal for women to buy, sell and own fashion. The Bengaluru-based company was set up this year.

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Richa Singh is the Founder of YourDOST, a web portal that offers complete support to people looking to discuss any kind of emotional issues by providing instant online access to experts along with the much-required anonymity. This year the company raised Rs 2.5 crore in angel funding to cover its marketing and expansion needs.

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Ritika Dhyawala and Nirmala Kunwar are the Co-founders of Basil Systems, an IoT company. Its home automation product CloverBoard is a Wi-Fi-connected smart switchboard which gives users convenience, energy savings and security. This Bengaluru-based company was founded in 2014.

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Suchi Mukherjee is the Founder and CEO of Limeroad, an online social discovery platform. The company has announced a Series-C fund raise of $30 million. Existing investor Tiger Global Management led the new round with participation from existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and Matrix Partners India.

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Sairee Chahal is the Founder of SHEROES. Set up in early 2014, it is a jobs and career community for women. In August this year, the company raised Rs five crore in an angel round from Raghav Bahl and Ritu Kapur led Quintillion Media, 500 Startups and a group of individuals, including Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Rajan Anandan, Binny Bansal, Mekin Maheshwari, Girish Mathrubhootham, Indus Khaitan, and Krishna Mehra.

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Swati Bhargava is the Co-founder of Gurgaon-based Cashkaro, a cashback and coupon platform that raised Rs 25 crore in Series A funding from Kalaari Capital this year.

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Shuchi Pandya is the Founder of Pipa+Bella, which recently raised $650,000 from Singapore-based LionRock Capital, Rajesh Sawhney, Teruhide Sato, and Roopa Nath. The company’s advisors include GSF Founder Rajesh Sawhney and former CEO of Freecultr.com Sujal Shah. It is a portal that offers women curated collections of fashion jewellery at affordable prices.

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Shree Kulkarni is the Co-founder of Bizom, a mobile-first platform for retail commerce serving the supply chain for consumer goods and FMCG. A cloud-based application, Bizom was launched in 2012 as the flagship product of Mobisy Technologies Pvt Ltd. It has raised $250,000 in seed funding from Ojas Venture Partners in 2013.

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Sabina Chopra is the Co-founder of the Guraon-based Yatra founded in 2006. It is an online travel search engine that also offers online booking services that enable individuals to find and book flights, hotels and holiday packages.

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Sakshi Tulsian is the Co-founder of Posist, a cloud-based restaurant management platform that provides solutions for table orders, deliveries, expenses and recipes.

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Shubhra Chadda is the Co-founder of Chumbak, a design house that brings together a curated mix of clothing, accessories and home décor started in 2009.

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Shalini Nautiyal is the Co-founder of Yipeedo, founded in 2012. Yipeedo was built to help consumers discover activities, things to do in a city and club businesses nearby to make a plan. This user-personalised platform was acquired in October 2015 by Giftxoxo.

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Shanti Mohan is the Founder of Bengaluru-based Lets Venture that was founded in 2013. It is a company that runs an online deal-making platform.

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Surabhi Dewra is the Founder of Mera Career Guide. Founded in 2008 and based out of Delhi it is a marketplace to get instant career answers from career experts.

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Suruchi Wagh is the Founder and CPO at Jombay that was founded in 2011. It is a talent assessment and analytics firm.

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Shreowshi Sinha is the Co-founder of Frugal Labs, an electronics and communication enterprise specialising in educational technical training, skill development and prototyping products, headquartered in Bengaluru.

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Sreepriya Koppula is the CEO and Founder of Turnaround Systems, so named because their product was all about tuning images.

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Upasana Makati launched White Print in May 2013, which was India’s first 64-page English lifestyle magazine in Braille. The magazine is printed at the National Association for the Blind, Mumbai, and covers politics, music, film, technology, art, food, travel, success stories of the common man among others.

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Upasana Taaku is the Co-founder of Mobikwik, a mobile wallet and online payment system. Earlier this year, MobiKwik raised close to $25 million in a Series-B round led by Tree Line Asia.

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Valrie Wagoner is the Co-founder of ZipDial. The company developed an innovative platform that turns missed calls into a mobile marketing and analytics product. Twitter acquired it early this year.

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