Reproducibility package for Helping Women Start Up: Understanding The Constraints Facing Women Led Startups In India

India is home to the third-largest startup ecosystem, right behind the US and China (The State Of Indian Startup Ecosystem Report, 2022) and it has the potential to create over 30 million women owned enterprises that could create 150-170 million jobs by 2030 (Google and Co., 2019). To realize this potential of female-led growth we need to understand the barriers women-led firms face throughout their life cycle. In this paper we use data on over 110 thousand firms with an online presence across India to compare the experiences of women-led startups and male-led startups. Specifically, we focus on the differences by gender of founder of a startup in entry costs, networks, funding, engagement of women and exits. We find that, women face higher entry costs than men plus women tend to play-it-safe by entering sectors that are high growth at the time of entry, foregoing gains from entering sectors that are yet to ripen. We also find that women founders have more potential connections than male founders from the elite educational institutions they studied at and the professional organizations they worked in prior to entering the startup industry, but these connections are not realized in terms of investments or participation in their startup venture relative to men. When women overcome the entry and social capital barriers, we find that they are more likely to receive funding and early investment from angel investors. Interestingly, women founders persist despite funding taking longer to materialize and with potentially greater effort compared to their male counterparts and ultimately, women-led startups are more likely to have successful exits and less unsuccessful exits from the industry. Similar to the broader benefits that accrue when women benefit, women-led startups are more likely to have positive ripple effects on engagement of other women in the startup industry.