Fortune India MPW 2025: Women bring integrity uniquely to entrepreneurship, but courage needed to take the plunge in the male fiefdom, say panelists

One of the things that women bring uniquely to entrepreneurship is integrity and its values, panellists discussing ‘Women in Entrepreneurship’ at Fortune India’s Most Powerful Women (MPW) event concurred. Soumya Rajan, founder and CEO, Waterfield Advisors, said that women bring integrity uniquely to entrepreneurship. She was adding to the point that Devita Saraf, founder, chairperson and CEO, The Vu Group, raised. “As a woman, it is important that we really add our uniqueness, our speciality, our empathy, our vision to the business we do,” she said.

Rajan raised the question of integrity after reflecting on the 17 years she spent in corporate roles within traditional banking. “One fine day, I turned 40 and realised that the industry I was in was male-dominated, and it was also an industry that was ‘difficult and dirty’, because it was, in many ways, driven by commissions that you received for pushing products into client portfolios that the clients didn’t need. I felt that I needed to change that,” she said.

Saraf, on the other hand, believes that what women add differently to business is that they are driven by vision and purpose. “We want to do customer-centric things.  We want to do things that build a better company culture. There’s also a strong purpose of giving back. There’s a lot of creativity in our work. There’s a lot more senses to it than the sciences,” she said.

However, in order to take the plunge into doing something different, it is important to have courage. “So, when I think about entrepreneurship for myself, I think that you need courage, because without courage, you can’t take that next step. That courage comes because you have family support, but you really need to dig deeper into the mental resolve that you have and the self-belief that you need,” said Rajan.

Amisha Vora, CMD, PL Capital Group (Prabhudas Lilladher), echoed her point. “In my entire journey, I had many questions about myself, whether at this age, will I be able to pull the kind of hours that I did before,” she said. According to Vora, doubts also crept in about whether, as a woman, she would be taken seriously or not. “If I don’t remain within my boundaries as a woman, and I talk sense, then the other person will have to talk sense,” she said. With this conviction, according to Vora, she was able to pay off her debt, did a small fund-raise. “I’m sure I’m ready for a larger fund-raise,” she said.