An Empirical study on Micro-Women Entrepreneurship Development in India: A Study with Special Reference to Women Street Vendors in Hyderabad

Abstract

The micro-entrepreneurship of women in the urban informal economy of India has become a powerful means to a dependable livelihood, diversification of household income, and economic empowerment at the grassroots. Street vending, which involves minimum capital investment, formal qualification and low capital and investment, has become one of the easiest ways of economic adjustment to self-employment by economically subsidiary urban women. The current paper focuses on socio-economic profile and motivations, operational and financial-inclusion conditions of women street vendors in the city of Hyderabad with one of the largest numbers of informal people that represent vending in South India. The research takes the form of a descriptive-cum-analytical research design based on a structured field survey of women vendors working in major clusters of the General Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) region as well as a review of the secondary literature and government scheme data, such as the Pradhan Mantri Street Vendor-s AtmaNirbhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) scheme. Depending on the chi-square tests, one-way ANOVA, Pearson correlation, and multiple linear regression to obtain results, it can be stated that women choose street vending mainly due to need and not opportunity, experience continued limitations in access to working capital, storage, and selling space, and that despite increased awareness, they are still partially inaccessible to formal microfinance and welfare services. Working capital is observed to be very strong and highly correlated with monthly income (r = 0.612) and turns out to be the most dominant predictor of income in a multiple regression model that explains variance in income (45% above other predictors working hours and years of experience). The paper will wrap up by offering policy based recommendations on how the skill building, the availability of credit, legal protection under the Street Vendors Act 2014 and the infrastructural features in the market can be enhanced to allow women vendors to develop micro- entrepreneurship on a sustainable basis.