Female Entrepreneurs in Rajkot City Beauty-Care Service Industry

Abstract

Entrepreneurship amongst women has been a recent concern. Women have become aware of their existence, their rights, and their work situation and thus entrepreneurial activity relating to women entrepreneurs has been the interest of many researchers, as they have become the main contributors to today’s economy. However, not much is known about what motivates and hinders, what are the success factors of ‘Women-Pruners’ in their entrepreneurial process. This paper examines the socio-economic background, motivational factors, barriers in starting and running an enterprise, and success factors among women entrepreneurs of Rajkot engaged in beauty-care (beauty-salon) service industry. This paper is an exploratory study to understand the female entrepreneurship running beauty salons in the 17th fastest developing city of Gujarat – Rajkot (Dist. Rajkot). Women entrepreneurs are randomly selected from a list. The research design in this study focused on the primary data collected using a self-administered questionnaire that was distributed through personal meeting. The instruments assessed relevant areas, such as demographic and business information, motivations, entrepreneurial characteristics, business problems, and success factors.