From SHG to entrepreneur — the financing, mentoring and market scaffolding required to move millions of women from livelihood to enterprise.
Self-help groups solved a real problem of their decade: gathering women into a savings and credit habit. But the SHG was never designed to be an enterprise vehicle. The next decade requires honest acknowledgment of that ceiling — and a new architecture above it.
Three pieces are missing. Enterprise-grade capital, not group-graded credit. Mentoring that lasts beyond the first loan cycle. And market linkages built on aggregation, not on individual hustle.
A practical model has begun to emerge under DAY-NRLM and similar programmes: identifying high-potential women entrepreneurs within SHGs, giving them tailored capital, embedding business coaching, and connecting them to demand. Where this stack is in place, the unit economics work.
If we scale this stack, women-led enterprise will become one of the most important asset classes of rural India — not because it is fashionable, but because the underlying demand, discipline and demography are all on its side.