Why Digital Access Alone Falls Short for Women’s Entrepreneurship
Evidence shows that it is not connectivity per se, but the orchestration of technology with networks, resources and innovation that drives growth
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Pavani Prabha Tanaji, BITS Pilani - Hyderabad
Swati Alok, BITS Pilani - Hyderabad
Rishi Kumar, BITS Pilani - Hyderabad
SDG 5: Gender Equality | SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth | SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
Institutions: Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship | Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises | Ministry of Women and Child Development
Digitisation has become a global shorthand for empowerment. The logic appears simple: provide women with smartphones, apps, and internet access, and their enterprises will thrive. India’s ambitious drive for digital inclusion – through initiatives like Aadhaar, UPI, and Digital India – embodies this belief.
Yet evidence from a focused survey of 213 women entrepreneurs across several Indian states reveals a more complex reality. Access is common, yet outcomes depend less on possession and more on how tools are deployed strategically. Access, in other words, is only the beginning – not the destination.
The Ground Reality
Women entrepreneurs in India face layered constraints. Socio-cultural factors, such as family responsibilities, restrict mobility; access to credit is limited by collateral requirements and gender bias; and male-dominated networks often gatekeep critical business knowledge. Infrastructure gaps of patchy internet, unreliable electricity, and weak logistics compound the challenge.
Digital platforms, especially during the pandemic, opened new channels. But many women used them mainly for transactions – taking orders or receiving payments – without significantly expanding their businesses. For most, technology improved efficiency but did not alter outcomes. To illustrate, one entrepreneur might use WhatsApp simply to receive orders from existing customers, while another might harness it to analyse demand patterns, coordinate supply chains, and experiment with new products. Both have digital access, but only the latter uses it strategically for growth.
From Ownership to Orchestration
This difference reflects resource orchestration: success depends less on owning resources than on how they are structured, combined, and deployed over time.
The survey shows that basic tools such as mobile and web apps do not directly predict business success. What matters is the way digital reliance supports resource acquisition and experimentation. Orchestration – aligning digital tools with finance, logistics, mentors, and supply-chain partners – is what separates stronger outcomes from weaker ones.
Here the distinction between everyday tools and advanced industrial technologies is crucial. Smartphones, apps, and websites, are invaluable for visibility and transactions, but their effect often remains transactional, improving efficiency without necessarily generating innovation. Advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, IoT, augmented or virtual reality demand deeper organisational changes, – from staff training to workflow redesign. Few women entrepreneurs use advanced technologies, but those who do show far greater experimentation and innovation.
For policy, this nuance is vital. Treating all digital adoption as equal risks obscuring the greater transformative potential of advanced technologies.
Experimentation and Innovation
The survey highlights business model experimentation as a central mediator. Entrepreneurs who used digital reliance to test revenue models, partnerships or product ideas were more likely to achieve growth.
The results suggest a serial pathway: digital reliance enables resource acquisition; resources support experimentation; and experimentation predicts entrepreneurial success. Resource acquisition by itself is insufficient unless channelled into experimentation.
This shows that digitalisation is most valuable when it sparks adaptive learning. Experimentation is the process, and innovation is the outcome. Digital platforms make this easier by offering real-time feedback loops. Entrepreneurs who embrace a culture of trial and learning turn digital investments into tangible growth. This iterative approach builds resilience, allowing businesses to adapt as conditions change.
When combined with advanced tools and effective orchestration, experimentation yields innovation – new products, services and markets that strengthen competitiveness. In a globalising economy, this capacity for innovation allows women-led enterprises not only to survive but to thrive. It is also a route to empowerment, as women demonstrate leadership and autonomy through their ability to create and adapt.
What Must Change: Policy and Practice
India’s digital policy has made commendable progress in expanding infrastructure, improving internet penetration and ensuring device availability. These steps lay the foundation. The next task is to shift from access to capability.
That requires rethinking training and education. Beyond showing how to use an app, programmes must build skills in analysing data, integrating resources, and redesigning business models. Government initiatives such as the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana could be adapted to integrate digital entrepreneurship modules tailored for women. Over the longer term, embedding digital literacy and entrepreneurial skills into school and college curricula and extending community programmes to women outside formal education will ensure capability building is inclusive.
Financial incentives can also play a catalytic role. Targeted grants, subsidised credit, or tax breaks for women-led firms adopting advanced technologies would encourage risk-taking and innovation. Ministries overseeing MSMEs and digital economy initiatives could design such measures in partnership with state governments.
Supportive ecosystems are equally vital. Women entrepreneurs benefit when incubators, accelerators, mentorship platforms and digital service providers are accessible to them. State-supported incubators, partnerships with industry bodies, and collaborations with universities can provide the scaffolding needed to integrate women into value chains and supply networks.
For entrepreneurs themselves, the message is clear. Digital tools are powerful, but only when used as bridges to resources, networks and opportunities. Success lies in asking how each tool can help acquire collaborators, experiment with models or expand into markets.
Community organisations and local governments can reinforce these practices by creating safe learning spaces, facilitating peer exchanges and promoting collective ventures. When women learn together and share strategies, digital tools become more than conveniences, they become collective levers of change.
A Vision with Global Relevance
The survey offers a snapshot in time, but its core insight has wider resonance: access matters less than how tools are used. Across emerging economies from Bangladesh to Nigeria to Brazil governments are investing heavily in digital inclusion. Yet without parallel investments in capabilities, ecosystems and supply-chain linkages, entrepreneurial outcomes will remain limited.
India’s digital journey has already reshaped daily life, from online payments to telemedicine. For women entrepreneurs, the potential is even greater. If access is combined with capability, and capability channelled into experimentation and innovation, digitalisation can become a true engine of empowerment.
This is the opportunity before us: not simply to connect women, but to enable them to lead, to innovate and to grow. In doing so, India can unlock a generation of women entrepreneurs who are not only participants in the economy but pioneers of its future competitiveness and inclusivity.
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Authors:
The discussion in this article is based on the authors’ research published in Women's Studies International Forum (Volume 113). Views are personal.