http://dspace.ediindia.ac.in:8181/xmlui//handle/123456789/832 Fri, 15 May 2026 12:05:42 GMT 2026-05-15T12:05:42Z http://dspace.ediindia.ac.in:8181/xmlui//handle/123456789/855 Experiences of Female Entrepreneurs in the Pondicherry Region Nirmala, V To integrate women into a country's development and growth process, literacy, employment and health are globally recognised as crucial for their empowerment. Inadequacy of female entrepreneurship is one of the constraining factors in their empowerment. Hence, the government of India is making planned efforts to inculcate a sense of entrepreneurship among women through various incentives and development programmes. This paper addresses the issue of female entrepreneurs, their motivation, problems and constraints in Pondicherry region. The study is based on a survey conducted on during 1999-2000, covering a random sample of 250 rural and urban female entrepreneurs. To pursue the objectives of the study simple average, percentage and scaling technique are employed. The study reveals rural female entrepreneurs to be less qualified than their urban counterparts. Majority of them in both areas started their business between 20-29 years of age. They are largely engaged in traditional and less remunerative activities in rural areas and in trade and services in the urban areas. They mainly used own investment funds rather than borrowed capital. Monetary returns for the two groups were quite low, with the urbanites earning relatively higher income. The market channel for raw materials was wholesalers iI1 both regions, while for sales of the finished products it was consumers. The motivations to start enterprise in both areas were reported to be the desire to earn money, to supplement family income and to do something independently. The business problems experienced by the two groups were almost common, viz., competition from better quality products, difficulty in getting loan and irregular work. The general constraints included excessive work burden and responsibilities for both the respondents. Conflicts of dual responsibilities as a worker and home-maker, low social contacts and lack of self-motivation were the common socio-psychological constraints faced by the two groups. Mon, 06 Jan 2003 00:00:00 GMT http://dspace.ediindia.ac.in:8181/xmlui//handle/123456789/855 2003-01-06T00:00:00Z http://dspace.ediindia.ac.in:8181/xmlui//handle/123456789/854 Appropriating Returns from Investments in Innovations: A Case Study of Magic Herbs Pvt.Ltd Gupta, Vivek; Awasthy, Dheeraj India has a reputation for its traditional therapies around the world. However given the vast diversity of the country there are thousands of such herbs and therapies. Given this diversity, traditional knowledge for long has been lying dormant and also getting lost. However scientific trial and usage of this can bring successful new products. This knowledge has been successfully exploited albeit under controversy by large multinational firms. Small entrepreneurial ventures get lured to herbal medicine market by low legal entry barriers. However they face serious challenges in market access of prescriptions markets. Magic Herbs (P) Ltd. was a small entrepreneurial pharmaceutical firm dealing in herbal medicines located in Southern Indian state of Kerala. Company was promoted by Mr. Kapil Malik who was son of a senior dermatologist Dr. A. V. Malik. Magic Herbs had developed unique herbal products by converting traditional knowledge into successful products. Dr. Malik and Magic Herbs had invested a considerable time and resources in development and trials of these new drugs. These products were launched in 1998 in prescription drug market in Kerala. During late 2001 Magic Herbs had reached a plateau in the product sales and its profitability was very low. The company tried to create a marketing network but it could only attain a low performing level. Despite having innovative power products, Magic Herbs was struggling to find a clear strategic path for itself. Company CEO Mr. Malik had just called off services of its entire sales staff. Mr. Malik had been seriously thinking about various options before him, which included from complete sell off to high investments in marketing. He knew that Magic Herbs was entering into a second stage of its life-cycle, where it could transform itself into a large innovative herbal firm or just fade into obscurity. There were ample opportunities for him but at the same time he also knew that if he did not act fast, environment was rapidly changing to more internationally competitive one. Mon, 06 Jan 2003 00:00:00 GMT http://dspace.ediindia.ac.in:8181/xmlui//handle/123456789/854 2003-01-06T00:00:00Z http://dspace.ediindia.ac.in:8181/xmlui//handle/123456789/853 Intrapreneurial Competence Building through Quality Function Deployment and Multi-source Interactive Learning: A Module in Entrepreneurship for Engineering Undergraduates Vyas, Vijay Creation of new and potentially fast growing businesses is the most obvious, and in popular perception, the only, consequence of entrepreneurial activity. The standard approach to entrepreneurship education too is to build around this notion. From an educational perspective, entrepreneurship, though is a problematic area, practicing entrepreneurs are rarely formally trained in entrepreneurship. A high proportion of individuals who receive entrepreneurship education, in some form or other, do not become entrepreneurs. In formal education, entrepreneurship education's share is negligible at most places. Entrepreneurship is not a conventional profession in the sense that formal qualifications are not needed to work as an entrepreneur. Full-time, long-term courses exclusively designed to impart entrepreneurial skills targeted towards those who want to start new ventures are rare. A large majority of those, who receive entrepreneurship education in universities, are training to become business or engineering professionals and are receiving it as an adjunct or supplementary competency in the belief that it increases the value of training in their main profession. Implicit in this belief is the expectation that graduates from these fields have a high probability of starting independent business and if any of them were to explore such a possibility, entrepreneurial competencies may come handy. Naturally, the approach and content of entrepreneurship education for those who have an explicit goal of starting a business immediately upon completion and for those who are packing in their educational baggage a small entrepreneurship kit to be opened and used, if need be, should be different. As an educator I would be at a loss to know what should be the contents of such a kit, apart from being uncertain, not knowing when it is going to be opened, whether it would be useable, if opened too long after, and what expiry date to be mentioned on it. The prospective students, in case such a redundancy was made known, would be wary of taking it at all, as they have, by choosing a course in engineering or business made this plain that they do not wish to start a business immediately and be better advised to look for its more updated version as and when the need arose. By this reasoning entrepreneurship education peripheral to a mainstream training such as business or engineering apparently has no meaning. Mon, 06 Jan 2003 00:00:00 GMT http://dspace.ediindia.ac.in:8181/xmlui//handle/123456789/853 2003-01-06T00:00:00Z http://dspace.ediindia.ac.in:8181/xmlui//handle/123456789/852 Rural Entrepreneurship in the Era of Globalization: Challenges and Response Mohanty, Tapan R The evolution of human development has brought a new dimension into the paradigm of development. As a result education, empowerment and environmental consciousness are indoctrinated into the realms of development along with economic growth. In recent years various dimensions of human development like democratic decentralisation; gender disparities and empowerment are being studies in rather detail but in the ensuing euphoria of some critical dimensions of empowerment i.e. economic self-sufficiency are neglected. Economic independence is the core of empowerment and therefore requires specific attention. In the era of globalisation and liberalisation this has larger significance particularly in terms of safeguarding self-interest and fostering economic freedom. The hegemonisation and homogenisation perpetrated by the cultural globalisation through Coca-colonization and McDonaldization has threatened the livelihoods and identity of these sections. Artisans particularly of rural India are a vulnerable section and in the times of globalisation the state is unable to help them as the negotiations under structural adjustment has made it gradually withdraw from welfare activities and civil society is neither strong nor capable enough to take over the responsibility. Therefore, the need arises of capacity development of which entrepreneurship development is a part. This paper is an effort to look at the dimension of rural entrepreneurship and their dilemmas in .the aftermath of recent economic shift. Mon, 06 Jan 2003 00:00:00 GMT http://dspace.ediindia.ac.in:8181/xmlui//handle/123456789/852 2003-01-06T00:00:00Z