FORMER CABINET MINISTER Smriti Irani has had a hectic day of shoot on the sets of Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi in Mumbai’s Film City. But in between shots she effortlessly manages to get out of the character of the famed ‘Tulsi Virani’ and talks about her SPARK 100K Collective (a part of the Alliance For Global Good–Gender Equity and Equality that she founded in 2024), through which she aspires to empower 100,000 women entrepreneurs across 300 cities with funds and the capacity to scale. “By the way, Tulsi also becomes an entrepreneur in the second chapter of Kyunki,” she smiles. She quickly goes back to the Spark 100K conversation—“My goal is to list at least 200 of these enterprises on the stock exchange.”

The former minister’s narrative of women empowerment has clearly evolved in the last couple of years. Her perspective of financial inclusion of women is not just about getting more women into the workforce. It is also about empowering them to become job creators. “I decided to deviate a major part of my resources to enable women to own businesses themselves,” Irani explains. The women entrepreneurs in the SPARK 100K fold have run businesses for at least three years. The focus is to help them scale, connect them with global supply chains, and help them market themselves better.

“We always talk about what happens to women when they don’t succeed. We rarely talk about women who have succeeded and seen the impact on their lives from the perspective of the family or society.”

For SPARK 100K, Irani has partnered with Gates Foundation and Tata Trusts. She is also working with CII, Ficci, Assocham and a host of regional trade associations. Besides, the likes of The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) and the Institute of Company Secretaries are helping women entrepreneurs understand the language of taxation and other structural nuances of a business.

Helping build scale

So how is SPARK 100K helping women scale businesses? Irani cites the example of a recent session conducted in the industrial belt of Wazirpur, Delhi, where the collective invited 300 women entrepreneurs to get trained by veterans from consulting firms such as Deloitte India and the ICAI. “When a vice president of a Big Four consulting firm talks about the local female entrepreneur hero, there is an immediate gasp in the audience.”

Irani has also roped in the British Council for English language training. A digital marketer took the women through the nuances of brand-building on digital platforms and also gave tips on packaging. “In fact, the digital marketer who had come all the way from Gujarat was surprised how aware women entrepreneurs (some of them above 50 years of age) were about which social media platform they should invest more money on.”

The challenge isn’t as much about marketing skills or packaging capability; it is more to do with the inability to build a formal structure around the business. “We explain to them the benefits and importance of formalisation. A lot of them pool capital from their friend circle or family, but don’t bother to register their business. We are also trying to onboard them on the GeM (Government e Marketplace) portal. Once they are a part of the government supply chain, they learn the benefits of formalisation on their own.”

An integral part of the SPARK 100K initiative is also to help women entrepreneurs with capital. Irani is getting ready to launch a $100-million AIF (alternative investment fund). “It is an aggregator of various capital funds, including PEs and VCs. We will tell the entrepreneurs, if you think your local bank is not able to meet your needs, or you want to be a bit more ambitious and need more capital, they will help you. We also have the National Stock Exchange, which wants to help them understand the money market,” Irani explains.

SPARK 100K is barely a few months old, but Irani has already had her first aha moment — a 60-year-old entrepreneur walked up to her in a small town in Haryana and said her business was doing better than her son’s, and that the latter wants her to go slow for now.

Most women are bound by familial pressures, says Irani. “They give up their businesses because they often calculate the social cost of doing business and not just the business cost. In case someone from the family is causing hindrance to my business, should I pursue a legal battle? That’s a different dynamic for Indian women entrepreneurs.”

So, getting a woman to start her own business is just one part of the story, the bigger and more difficult part is to get her to sustain for the long term.

Impactful storytelling

Irani’s return to the sets of Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi after 16 years isn’t just about her passion for acting. The highest paid actor on Indian television had a purpose — “I wanted to come back to television to help reflect stories which otherwise TV wasn’t doing. This particular chapter has helped me talk about sexual abuse, domestic violence, ageism, humiliation thrust upon women or the challenges of raising young boys; the emotional challenges young boys go through when they are not taught how to express themselves. The idea has been to do socially relevant conversations, which can be shown cinematically.”

In one of the episodes of Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi season 2, Irani collaborated with Bill Gates where the latter appeared in a cameo to talk about maternal and child health.

“It is always also nice when you come back to something that you left,” she says. Irani’s character in the show, ‘Tulsi Virani’, is a powerful matriarch who is deep-rooted in culture, yet breaks out of her comfort zone and becomes an entrepreneur. She runs a weaver cooperative in Kutch that generates employment for rural women. “I wanted to convey that women can be traditional, yet, extremely good in English language and can also help other women.”

The quintessential ‘Ba’ (mother in Gujarati) on the sets enjoys playing the matriarch even after shoot hours. “I love the interface with my colleagues,” she says. In between shots, Irani often finds herself advising her co-actors on myriad topics. “The younger ones come and ask me how to negotiate contracts. I teach them how to negotiate. I teach them how to possibly look at the impact of AI and IPR. It is fascinating to have young actors around me. There are people who are interested in philanthropy, there are also those who want to become entrepreneurs.”

Does Irani miss the power centre in Delhi? “I don’t have a habit of regressing into my past. I can tap into the past and build a stronger future, but I don’t recede to the past.” She takes pride in being able to come back to her acting career despite a 16-year hiatus. “As a policymaker you are bound by the Constitution, so I gave up all my work in the private sector. That’s the other message I would like to convey — the fact that I could come back to the private sector and become successful. Success is not dependent on your age; success need not be because you are in a silo of either a politician or an actor.”

“A woman has a plenitude of choices today. It is the woman’s right to choose what she wants to express. Given my experience, I cannot be siloed and defined by just one label.”

No wonder, Irani firmly believes the brand she has built for herself has been about challenging comfort zones and breaking silos.