Kanika Gupta Shori Talks About Difficulties Faced by Women-Driven Startups

The COO and Co-Founder, Square Yards, Kanika Gupta Shori, has stated that funding has largely been a male-dominated space, and it may get tough for women to secure funding from investors in many cases. While talking about her real estate journey, Shori stated how women-driven startups are often not as appealing or investment-worthy for several investors until a male co-founder is on-boarded.

She also added that in her fascinating journey of a decade at Square Yards, how she participated in multiple funding rounds and how several investors had preconceived notions about women, particularly when the business was in an industry dominated by men. However, she also added that things were improving steadily with the passage of time, while stating that the best way to tackle these notions was to become the hardest working person in that room and let your work do the talking and speak for itself.

While there positive changes throughout the ecosystem, Shori reiterated that investors should get rid of biases that may otherwise be harmful in their process of screening. Rather than subjective evaluation, they should focus more on indicators of performance and metrics that are measurable. She also stated that celebrating successful female entrepreneurs is crucial while also scaling up the overall visibility of role models who are women.

Shori also talked of how the entrepreneurial environment is steadily turning positive for women, giving them more access to resources, mentorship, and networking opportunities. Organizations and various initiatives that support women are also coming up in recent times. This is a support system that is playing a massive role in the empowerment of female entrepreneurs who have not just accomplished huge milestones and inspired the new-generation of founders who are women, but also enabled them to better-navigate a funding ecosystem which is largely male-dominated.

She also narrated a fascinating insight where she mentioned how her co-founder was her husband, Tanuj Shori. Hence, she clearly stated that she has never felt that she played second fiddle to him in pitches and discussions regarding funding. Both the founders have differentiated and well-defined responsibilities where she runs the company and manages day-to-day operations as the COO, while he works as the CEO. He leads the funding discussions and relations with investors with the CFO of the company. Both the founders balance out each others’ strengths and weaknesses, which is the mantra for running a successful business enterprise.

She mentioned how there is still a bias regarding women not being suited for leadership positions and how they should stick to roles that are gender-specific. The bias is majorly compounded by female underrepresentation in senior industry leadership positions. Shori stated as an example how just 18% of 30,000 active digital startups in India were founded by women. She also mentioned how investors tend to neglect the unique obstacles that women entrepreneurs have to contend with, thereby creating a gap in confidence which often hinders the perceived feasibility of business ideas of female entrepreneurs in a male-centric environment. She talked of how investors should invest more in women-led businesses since it is an opportune moment when there is higher demand for products and services from such entities and also since women are building profitable enterprises with lower failure rates.