Inside Seema Chaturvedi’s Plan to Create More Women Entrepreneurs in India
Last month Delhi-born Seema Chaturvedi announced the launch of an early growth venture fund–Achieving Women Equity (AWE) Funds worth ₹350 crore. As the name suggests, the investment platform will be investing in women-owned, led, and influenced companies in India.
For Chaturvedi, founder and Managing Partner at AWE, the oracle from Omaha Warren Buffet made a big impact on her choice of career in finance. Chaturvedi’s interest in the corporate world and entrepreneurship started after reading about Warren Buffet’s success as an investor who created significant value which transformed not only companies but also the communities around them. Inspired by his impact, she altered her idea to become an engineer and pursued Economics at the prestigious Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi.
Chaturvedi has been in the financial ecosystem for more than two decades and she brings a unique perspective to the strategic planning and investment process. During her college days, she honed her financial know-how and made a debut in the stock market. “I started my career in the Indian financial markets at a very pivotal time in India’s growth story. India was on the brink of a major economic crisis. But under the very capable leadership of former Finance Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, everyone came together to launch a series of massive economic reforms packages such as opening up of foreign investments, modernisation, and governance of the stock markets, privatisation of select public enterprises among others which truly seeded the growth India has since witnessed”.
Around the 1990s, when Sensex went into a frenzy, Chaturvedi also participated in that bull run and started a job at JM Financial Services. To build on these experiences and with her talent and grit, she earned a full scholarship to Boston College where she studied Finance.
Until 2002, Chaturvedi also worked at Shearson Lehman and Amherst Partners. In 2001, Chaturvedi appeared in the American 40 under 40-list, published by Crain Communications. In 2002, she was listed in Crain’s 100 Most Influential Business Women list. But the biggest turning point came when Chaturvedi became the first woman board member of TiE Global (The IndUS Entrepreneurs), a non-profit organization that supports start-ups by fostering new entrepreneurs. Being the only woman board member at TiE, Chaturvedi noticed that she was getting recognized. “Before that, when I used to say the exact same thing as my boss would, I was never taken seriously,” she said.
Chaturvedi made a pitch to increase the representation of women in TiE, Unfortunately, her suggestion was turned down. “TiE was a 99.99% male-dominated organization, so suggested we add more women to the membership through women-focused recruitment initiatives. I was told that I was trying to mollycoddle women by giving them a false sense of security,” she said.
Chaturvedi tabled the suggestion at the time but pushed forward in other aspects of her career. With each passing year, she focused on building Accelerator Group, an investment banking and strategic advisory services firm founded by her in 2002. Simultaneously, she also became a public speaker and spoke on topics related to finance business and entrepreneurship. She also worked on the Economic Advisory Council of a think tank in Washington DC.
“It seemed like everything was happening for a reason. I was now in a situation where I would be able to articulate the business case and the case of investing in women,” Chaturvedi said.
Again in 2015, she raised concerns about the minuscule representation of women in TiE. And, this time, she won the requisite support. Chaturvedi, who was once hesitant to identify as a feminist, proudly became one.
Chaturvedi, however, does not believe in the concept of only equality. Instead, she is a staunch proponent of equity. She says, “If you are giving a tall person and a short person equal height of stools, it will still be difficult for a shorter person to reach the top shelve of opportunity. And this is what happens with women, they have been stunted to access to opportunities”.
Chaturvedi then started a project called AIRSWEEE in 2016 funded by US State Department to promote entrepreneurship as a career option for women in India. “I was privileged in accessing the opportunities and I took it for granted. I realised that women in the rest of the world are not as privileged as I am,” she said.
Through AIRSWEEE (All India Road Show for Women Economic Empowerment through Entrepreneurship), Chaturvedi and her team mentored 575 women from 106 different cities (tier 2 and 3) in 20 states. Chaturvedi said 25-30% of women of AIRSWEEE were victims of domestic violence. But the programme gave such women a sense of purpose and self-belief. Women like Shraddha Kahre (Instant Rasoi), Thara Jayan (Ganya Oils), Sindhu Gopalsamy (Presso Oil), and Zaiba Narang (iThink Logistics) are some of the mentees whose startups have gone global now, Chaturvedi added.
Recognising the impact of AIRSWEEE, Chaturvedi then founded AWE Funds in 2019 to invest in early-stage innovative enterprises which promote gender equity. Chaturvedi said that achieving the goal of gender equity will take about 200 years, but she wants to make her contribution toward it. Businesses at an early stage are vulnerable, they are like “make it or break it,” and that’s why Chaturvedi decided to fund SMEs/ startups in the initial phase. AWE Funds does pre-seed or Series A funding in women-owned, led, or centric businesses.
“An investment in women definitely not a charity. Far from it. It actually delivers superior commercial returns,” Chaturvedi added. AWE set a goal of empowering 30 million women by 2030.
She also noticed that the existing loan and products were restrictive and did not provide the much-needed capital to women to expand their businesses. And access to equity remained an alien concept for many small women entrepreneurs in the country. “We are trying to break the cycle at a level where we are most effective in unlocking the flow of capital. I know first-hand how access to capital can dramatically change the growth of companies and even countries. So if I could make equity capital available at an early stage when most women businesses find it extremely difficult to access capital, it would provide an underlined equity base they can leverage up,” she said.
AWE has got ₹130 crore in commitment at present. Chaturvedi wants to derive equity capital and then commercialise that capital into women’s businesses. “We want the company that we have invested in to become an agent of change,” she said and urged the investee companies to increase women’s participation in generating India’s GDP. For example, in 2020 Chaturvedi invested in FreshoKartz Agri Products Pvt. Ltd, co-founded by Chandrakanta Sahu, which has empowered 120,000 other women, she said.
According to Chaturvedi, “The fastest growing emerging market in the world is not a country but its women. We should allow these women to get access to economic value creation”.
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