Women Entrepreneurs in India 2026: How Many Businesses Women Own, What They Run, and the Money They Can and Can’t Get

Ask how many businesses Indian women own and the official answers run from about one in seven to seven in ten, depending on which register you open. They are all describing the same thing: a very large number of very small enterprises, most of them run by one woman from home, heavily concentrated in tailoring, textiles and small retail, and short of the credit that would let them hire. This report sets out what India’s surveys, registries and lending schemes say about women as business owners in 2026: how many there are, what they make, the jobs they create, the money they get, and how far the most-quoted numbers stand up when they are traced to source.

1. How many businesses do Indian women own?

The best current measure is the Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises (ASUSE), the National Statistics Office’s count of non-farm businesses that are not registered companies — the shops, workshops and home units where almost all women’s enterprise sits. It estimated 7.92 crore such establishments in 2025, employing about 12.81 crore people.^[4] The percentage of female-owned proprietary establishments increased from 26.2 per cent in 2023–24 to 27.0 per cent in 2025.^[4]

The share has risen steadily across survey rounds. Women owned 17.4 per cent of proprietary establishments in 2010-11 and 26.2 per cent in 2023-24, according to the government, while the number of women-led MSMEs rose from 1 crore to 1.92 crore.^[22] The 2022-23 ASUSE round had put the share at 22.9 per cent.^[6]

Registration data tell a bigger story. As of 28 February 2026, 3,07,42,621 women-led enterprises were registered on the Udyam Registration Portal and the Udyam Assist Platform.^[1] That is a count of sign-ups to government portals, not a survey estimate, and it includes a very large number of informal micro units, as the next section explains.

2. Why the counts disagree, and where “20 per cent” comes from

Udyam has two doors. The Udyam Registration Portal is for formal MSMEs; there, women-owned units were 20.5 per cent of registrations since July 2020.^[3] Udyam Assist, opened in January 2023 to register informal micro enterprises, is dominated by women: they owned 70.49 per cent of the units registered there.^[3] Combine the two and women-owned enterprises made up 40 per cent of the 2,20,73,675 registered by November 2024.^[2] The 40 per cent figure is real, but it mostly measures who was enrolled in a registration drive for informal units, not a jump in women’s business ownership.

The figure most often repeated — that “about 20 per cent of MSMEs are women-owned” — traces to the National Sample Survey’s 73rd round, conducted in 2015-16. It found that for proprietary MSMEs as a whole, men owned 79.63 per cent and women 20.37 per cent.^[8] It is still printed in the Ministry of MSME’s annual report, where the women-owned count is given as 1,23,90,523 proprietary MSMEs.^[8] The 2019 Bain and Google study “Powering the Economy with Her” repeated the same share, estimating 13.5–15.7 million women-owned enterprises, or 20 per cent of all enterprises.^[9] So “20 per cent” is a decade-old survey figure; the 2025 equivalent is 27 per cent.

The Sixth Economic Census (2013-14), which also counts farm-linked activity such as livestock, found 8.05 million establishments owned by women, 13.76 per cent of the total.^[7] Bain’s own caveat cuts the other way: surveys in parts of India suggest 10% to 30% of businesses registered to women are not actually run by them.^[9]

3. Mostly one-woman enterprises

The single most important fact about women-owned businesses in India is their size. In the 2025 ASUSE, women owned 30.2 per cent of own-account establishments — those with no hired worker — but only 6.0 per cent of establishments that hire anyone.^[5] The Sixth Economic Census found the same pattern a decade earlier: women-owned establishments employed 13.45 million people, and the census reports that 83.19% of them were without hired workers.^[7] Women-owned establishments averaged 1.67 workers each.^[7]

Money follows size. Among formally registered Udyam MSMEs, women-owned units contributed 18.73 per cent of employment and 11.15 per cent of investment.^[3] Their share of turnover was 10.22 per cent.^[3] The NSS 73rd round showed the same drop-off by tier: women owned 20.44 per cent of micro enterprises, 5.26 per cent of small ones and 2.67 per cent of medium ones.^[8] Bain found only 17% of women-owned enterprises employ hired workers, against 28% for all enterprises.^[9]

4. What women own: manufacturing, trade and services

Women’s business ownership is concentrated in manufacturing to a degree that surprises most readers. In 2025, women headed 60.33 per cent of unincorporated manufacturing establishments, up from 58.36 per cent in 2023-24.^[5] In trade the share was 13.42 per cent and in other services 15.44 per cent.^[5] These are mostly home-based units: the IFC estimates that over 70 percent of India’s roughly 15 million women-owned MSMEs are manufacturing enterprises.^[11]

The Sixth Economic Census, which included agriculture, found 34.3% of women-owned establishments were in farm activities, largely livestock.^[7] Among the non-farm ones, manufacturing accounted for 29.8% and retail trade 17.8%.^[7]

5. Apparel and textiles: among the most female-owned trades in India

The survey’s activity tables show where that manufacturing is. Of the 92.6 lakh small establishments making wearing apparel in 2025, 807 in every 1,000 were owned by women.^[5] In textile manufacture — spinning, weaving, finishing and made-ups — 655 in every 1,000 of 24.9 lakh establishments were.^[5] Expressed as shares, that is 80.7 per cent and 65.5 per cent, or roughly 74.7 lakh women-owned apparel units and 16.3 lakh textile units (derived).^[5] Among manufacturing activities only tobacco products, at 940 in 1,000, has a higher female share.^[5]

Almost all of them are one-woman workshops. Among apparel units that hire workers, women owned 220 in 1,000; among own-account apparel units, 833 in 1,000 — about 22 and 83 per cent respectively (derived).^[5] Wearing apparel is also the largest single employer of women in the unincorporated economy: it accounts for 22.20% of all female workers in the sector and more than 48% of female manufacturing workers.^[5]

Tailoring, embroidery and textile finishing are among the trades in which an Indian woman is most likely to be her own employer. For the artisan and wage side of the same economy, see our reports on India’s handcraft and embroidery economy and what hand embroidery costs.

6. The jobs women-owned businesses create

Women-led MSMEs generated over 89 lakh additional jobs for women between FY21 and FY23, according to a government release.^[22] Women-owned businesses also hire women: in 2025, nearly 72 per cent of women-owned establishments with hired workers employed at least one woman.^[5] Overall, 28.71% of the unincorporated sector’s workers were female.^[5]

The total is hard to pin down because most women-owned units employ only the owner. The Sixth Economic Census counted 13.45 million people in women-owned establishments, 10.24 per cent of all employment.^[7] Bain and Google put direct employment at 22 to 27 million people.^[9] For the labour-force picture — women as employees, their participation and pay — see our report on India’s working women in 2026.

7. Credit schemes: who gets the loans, and how much

The Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana, which gives collateral-free loans up to ₹20 lakh, is the largest channel of formal credit to women business owners. By April 2026 it had sanctioned more than 57.79 crore loans, and two-thirds of them went to women.^[15] Women were 67% of beneficiaries.^[15] But the loans are small. Women borrowers had received ₹9.02 lakh crore under the Shishu band, ₹6.22 lakh crore under Kishor and ₹1.09 lakh crore under Tarun.^[15] Set against total disbursement of ₹40.07 lakh crore, that is about ₹16.33 lakh crore, or roughly 41 per cent of the money for two-thirds of the loans (derived; the TarunPlus band is not broken out by gender).^[15]

The average loan per woman has been growing: per-woman MUDRA disbursement reached ₹62,679 in FY25, growing at a compound 13 percent a year since FY16.^[16]

Stand-Up India, which finances greenfield enterprises, is much smaller but larger per loan. Women’s accounts grew from 55,644 to 1,90,844 between November 2018 and November 2024, with sanctioned amounts rising to ₹43,984.10 crore.^[17] By November 2023, 84% of its 2.09 lakh loans had gone to women.^[14] Other schemes tilt their terms toward women. The CGTMSE guarantee covers 90% of loans to women-led micro and small enterprises, against 75% in general, and about 40% of PMEGP beneficiaries are women.^[1] Even so, CGTMSE issued only 22% of its guarantees to women as of March 2024.^[14]

8. The credit gap, traced to its sources

The most-cited estimate of the shortfall comes from the IFC’s 2014 study, built on 2012 data. It put women-owned MSMEs’ total finance requirement at ₹8.68 trillion ($158 billion).^[10] Formal supply was ₹2.31 trillion ($42 billion).^[10] That left a finance gap of ₹6.37 trillion ($116 billion), or 73 per cent of total demand.^[10]

A widely shared 2021 headline described a “$158 billion finance gap” for women’s MSMEs.^[12] That figure matches the 2014 report’s total-demand estimate, not its gap, and the IFC official quoted in the article called it a “$158 billion financing opportunity”.^[10][12] The IFC’s 2022 follow-up estimated about 15 million women-owned MSMEs and said about 90 percent of women entrepreneurs had not borrowed from formal lenders.^[11] It also sized a “missing middle” of 2.7 million women-owned very small enterprises with credit demand of INR 836 billion ($11.4 billion).^[11]

More recent estimates are framed as percentages. SIDBI’s 2025 study puts the overall MSME addressable credit gap at about 24% or ~₹30 lakh crore.^[13] For women-owned MSMEs the gap is about 35%, against about 20% for male-owned ones.^[13] In SIDBI’s survey of 2,097 MSMEs, credit offtake was ~76% for women-led units and ~84% for men-led ones.^[13]

Credit-bureau data show women borrowing more, but rarely for business. Women opened about 37 lakh business-purpose loan accounts in 2024, worth ₹1.9 lakh crore.^[14] The number of such accounts has grown 4.6 times since 2019, but they made up only 3% of all loans taken by women in 2024.^[14] Gold loans were 36%.^[14] The share of women borrowers holding a business loan rose to 16% in December 2024 from 9% in December 2019.^[14]

9. Startups and venture money

On paper, women are well represented in India’s startup register. Of the 2,12,283 entities recognised as startups by DPIIT at 31 January 2026, 1,02,054 had at least one woman director or partner.^[18] That is about 48.1 per cent (derived).^[18] The measure is generous — one woman on the board qualifies — so it is not a count of women-founded companies. Of the 6,789 recognised startups since closed, 2,950 had a woman director, a closure rate of about 2.9 per cent against 3.5 per cent for the rest (derived).^[18]

The money is far less evenly spread. Under the government’s Fund of Funds for Startups, supported alternative investment funds had invested about ₹25,859 crore, of which ₹2,995 crore went to women-led startups.^[18] Using the year-wise annexure, women-led startups received about 12.9 per cent of the AIF money invested since 2020, ranging from 1.7 per cent in 2023 to 21.4 per cent in 2025 (derived).^[18] The seed scheme is the exception: about ₹294 crore of ₹592 crore approved under the Startup India Seed Fund went to women-led startups.^[18] Under the startup credit-guarantee scheme, women-led startups got about ₹39 crore of ₹925 crore guaranteed, roughly 4.2 per cent (derived).^[18]

Private funding data come from commercial databases and are less certain. Tracxn data reported by PTI put funding for women co-founded tech startups at $1.1 billion across 407 rounds in 2025, down 9 per cent from $1.2 billion in 2024.^[19] Rounds fell from 580 to 407 while the median deal grew from $2.4 million to $3.8 million.^[19] An earlier Tracxn cut published in December put the 2025 total at about $1 billion, down 3%, with funding rounds down 40%.^[23] Bengaluru-based companies raised $447 million, the most of any city.^[19]

10. Self-help groups and Lakhpati Didis

Rural women’s enterprise is organised mostly through self-help groups. Under the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana–National Rural Livelihoods Mission, 10.08 crore rural households have been mobilised into around 92 lakh SHGs.^[21] The Lakhpati Didi initiative counts members who earn at least ₹1 lakh a year on a sustainable basis, for at least 4 agricultural seasons or business cycles; more than 3.46 crore SHG members had reached that mark by July 2026.^[21] SHGs have accessed ₹13.41 lakh crore of bank credit since 2013-14, and the Start-up Village Entrepreneurship Programme had supported 4.32 lakh enterprises.^[21]

These are livelihood counts, not business-ownership counts: an SHG member who earns ₹1 lakh from dairy or tailoring may or may not run an enterprise in the ASUSE sense, and the two series should not be added together.

11. Selling to the government and online

Since 2018, central ministries and public-sector undertakings have been required to buy at least 3% of their annual procurement from women entrepreneurs.^[1][2] On the Government e-Marketplace, the Womaniya programme covers categories including handicrafts, handloom, jute and coir. In 2025-26, over 2.1 lakh women MSEs were registered on GeM, winning 13.7 lakh orders.^[20] They were awarded more than ₹28,000 crore of contracts, up 27.60% on the previous year, and took 5.6% of GeM’s total orders against the 3% target.^[20]

For consumer e-commerce, the rural livelihoods mission says it has partnered with GeM, ONDC, Amazon, Flipkart, Meesho and JioMart to sell SHG products, alongside its own eSaras platform.^[21] No marketplace publishes an audited count of women-owned sellers, so this report does not quote one. For women as buyers online, see how Indian women shop online.

12. State rankings

Rankings change with the measure. In the 2025 ASUSE, Telangana had the highest share of women-headed establishments among major states at 38.55 per cent, followed by West Bengal at 34.71 and Gujarat at 32.57.^[5] Karnataka (32.32), Tamil Nadu (30.24) and Maharashtra (29.67) were also above the national figure.^[5] Uttar Pradesh was lowest at 12.00 per cent, and Delhi was at 16.67.^[5] In manufacturing, Telangana’s women-headed share reached 80.45 per cent.^[5]

On Udyam registrations, Tripura (66%), West Bengal (62%) and Mizoram (60%) had the highest women-owned shares in November 2024; Himachal Pradesh (22%), Jammu and Kashmir (23%) and Rajasthan (25%) had the lowest.^[2] By absolute number, Maharashtra led with about 25.35 lakh women-owned registrations, followed by West Bengal (24.87 lakh), Uttar Pradesh (19.68 lakh) and Tamil Nadu (19.26 lakh).^[2] A decade earlier the Economic Census ranked Tamil Nadu first, with 13.51% of all women-owned establishments, followed by Kerala at 11.35%.^[7] In the NSS 73rd round, West Bengal alone held 23.42 per cent of India’s women-owned proprietary MSMEs.^[8]

13. Where this data is weakest

Ownership is not control. Every count here records whose name is on the business. Bain’s fieldwork suggests 10% to 30% of women-registered businesses are not run by women.^[9] No national survey measures this.

Registration counts are not surveys. Udyam totals rise with registration drives; the Udyam Assist platform in particular enrolled very large numbers of informal women-run units. Use ASUSE for shares and trends, and Udyam only as a count of registrations.^[3][4]

The credit-gap numbers are old or modelled. The IFC’s rupee figures are built on 2012 data; SIDBI’s percentages are modelled estimates with a survey of 2,097 firms behind them. Neither is an official statistic.^[10][13]

Startup funding depends on the database. Tracxn’s own figures for 2025 differ between its December and March releases, and “women co-founded” includes any company with one woman founder. DPIIT’s woman-director count measures directors, not founders.^[18][19][23]

No gender-of-owner output data. ASUSE does not publish gross value added by the owner’s gender, so the economic weight of women-owned businesses can only be inferred from Udyam’s turnover share of 10.22 per cent among formal registrants.^[3]

14. Frequently Asked Questions

Related research: India’s Working Women 2026 · India’s Handcraft and Embroidery Economy 2026 · How Indian Women Shop Online 2026