Women Entrepreneurs Have an Empathetic Edge In Creating User-Friendly Products -Nruthya Madappa

Nruthya Madappa, the Managing Partner of Cowrks Foundry, talks about how Cowrks being an early stage accelerator invests in companies across urban-tech, enterprise tech and social enterprise. While doing so, her own focus is essentially on ‘female-led companies’.

“I truly believe as a very big part of my investment thesis that women have just been taught by the world to do more with less to build very resilient and sustainable businesses.”

“In that entire journey of being a female entrepreneur and technologist, what I have really drawn a lot of strength from is building platforms for other female entrepreneurs.”

Nrthutya talks about how being a women entrepreneur and technologist comes with its different issues.

“There are unconscious biases you need to work against. You are always looked at as potentially second best.”

She says how growing up she used the feeling of being seen as a second best because of her gender as a ‘rallying force’ and that’s where most of her anger and ambition rose from.

“But now I realize being a woman in this field is really a superpower because it enables you to have a truly diverse empathetic voice that is akin to how products need to be built today.”

She highlights how product builders and developers also support that at the very basis of every product development is rather the ‘understanding of a user’. This, she says, comes from a deep place of empathy.

“I don’t mean that women are, by their gender more empathetic but we have a very diverse view of looking at the exact same problem and the same consumer. That brings out remarkably unique solutions.”

She says that opening up new fields, challenges, and problems, to find solutions for it, is her drive. This, she claims, doesn’t come because of her gender.

She says, “Being me, being truly unique, being diverse, and having a seat at the table for that diversity of opinion that comes from the perspectives I have had, is something that is my own superpower.”

Talking about ROAR, she describes how as a platform it aspires to bring together inspiring individuals from varied sectors, both women and men. A variant of the event, the Startup Bazaar provides the necessary space for female founders across India, to highlight the different solutions they are working on, whether it’s in healthcare, e-commerce, or other unique fields. Women entrepreneurs require a deeper ecosystem, unlike their male counterparts. This rather ceases to exist and needs to be built ground up. Startup Bazaar holds a huge potential in this regard.

“Women entrepreneurs in India don’t have enough support ecosystems that are built for their very specific needs, neither do they have as many platforms.”

Women entrepreneurs require as many platforms as can be possibly provided for them, she says. “A, to get their product and their idea out there, have different situations in which they are put to promote themselves and their products as well.”

Startup Bazaar, she says, in such a combination that creates the space to help women entrepreneurs hone their skills, pitch themselves better, and get the support for their companies and products.

Finally, she observes how women and men around the world are surely growing into what makes them unique.  Feminism and diversity and other voices around the table altogether enable better security and safety for people to speak up, and create better products.