Be! Fund: Investing in Young Entrepreneurs

Starting a business is not easy. It’s even harder if someone has invested in your idea because you’ve got a lot to prove. The pressure is on, and the world is watching. Often businesses take longer than anyone would hope to turn a profit, they take up all of your waking hours (and even dream time), you become obsessed, driven, impossible, and certainly not laid back. What if you are a mother too? Is it possible for women to do both, or do they still have to choose?

Be! Fund commits to make 50% of its investments in women. While that may be easy to say, it’s not so easy to achieve. Women are far less likely to self-elect, come forward, have an idea, think they can be entrepreneurs – than men – when it comes to deciding if a husband or a wife should work, well you know the answer. In the chance that women do come forward and decide to work, to set up a new business, they will always be pulled by other pressures, family, society, pressures that expect them to defer their business operations to another level of value.

We travelled to meet and catch up with our women entrepreneurs to try to understand it better. Are our ‘good’ businesses good or bad for kids?

Jaynathi’s candle business uses recycled wax from churches to make candles to light her slum with no electricity – she has created three jobs for women. For her eldest daughter, Nadhini 20, she’s an inspiration. Nadhini says “After seeing mother run her own business and improve the lives of people where we live, I too started a Saree business to help pay for my son’s medical treatments – because I could see we could do both, look after our families and work.”

Links:

• Could Mom Entrepreneurs be good for kids?
• Be! Fund in Global Post