For Start-up Founders, Age Is Just A Number

WHILE THE TERM ‘start-up’ evokes images of founders in early 20s, hustling from college dorms, entrepreneurship is not exclusive to the young. A cohort that often goes unnoticed is women embarking on entrepreneurial journey in later years of their lives, defying popular belief that life starts winding down after 50. One of the most prominent examples is Falguni Nayar, founder and CEO of beauty e-commerce chain Nykaa who started her business at 50. Nykaa today has a market cap of ₹51,722 crore. The beauty marketplace posted a 67% increase in consolidated net profit to ₹32.2 crore and a 24% rise in revenue from operations to ₹6,385 crore in FY24. While Nayar leapfrogged to entrepreneurship from a successful career in banking, others have made a mark after an extended career break.

Jenny Pinto left the fast-paced life of an ad filmmaker in early 1990s after making waves in the industry. “India was liberalising and Doordarshan was growing. Suddenly, there was a need for more ad filmmakers. It was a boom time for media and consumption,” says Pinto. She, however, decided to bid adieu to her métier to embrace motherhood. Becoming a mother brought her world into focus and made her question the impact of consumerism on environment. “I began to think about what kind of a world I am going to leave for my daughter,” she says. Pinto decided to look at the world from a different perspective. She had little idea that her foresight would become a driving force for India’s sustainable paper and lighting industry. Today, her brand, Oorjaa, offers an array of products from sophisticated lighting to artisanal home accessories, all crafted from recycled waste. The Bangalore-based brand has collaborated with FabIndia, Bungalow Eight in Mumbai, Amethyst in Chennai, apart from Fatty Bao, Yazu, Gonative, LinkedIn, Google and Reliance.

In 2014, Pinto’s creativity intersected with the entrepreneurial vision of décor brand Purple Turtles’ Radeesh Shetty, who provided funds for expansion. Shetty, 34, with a background in sales, says business has been growing more than 100% year-on-year since he came on board. “We were able to handhold the business by becoming a little more aggressive in sales because demand was there,” he says. Pinto uses banana fibre to make paper and agriculture waste to produce lights. Her commitment to sustainability is significant given the recycling landscape in India. In 2011, only 27% waste paper and 22% agricultural waste were repurposed into green paper. A decade earlier, these figures would have been even more dismal.

Like Pinto, many women have worked on “great ideas” after fulfilling societal and childcare responsibilities, founding businesses that often stand the test of time. Take Meenakshi Menon. She recognised a significant gap in technology market for senior citizens and launched GenSxty Tribe, whose GenS app helps the 60-plus demographic by combating loneliness and promoting personal growth. “When you’re younger, you get into businesses that everybody else is getting into. As you get older, you understand the market is in the niche,” she says. The senior population is growing fast, with projections indicating that by 2050, there will be more people over 60 than children under 15 worldwide. In India, 60 and above already make up over 10% population (149 million), and are expected to reach 21% (340 million) by 2050, according to the India Ageing Report by United Nations Population Fund and International Institute for Population Sciences. Despite this shift, brands and advertisers focus mostly on the young, overlooking the substantial spending power of seniors. “A business has to reflect consumer needs,” says the 65-year-old founder, adding that you need to identify their latent needs. “Do they need a product that addresses those needs? The first step is to understand who they are, where they come from, what are their concerns and what are their compulsions,” she says. For ₹100 a month, GenS gives subscribers access to a variety of content, including comedy shows and travel programmes. It also offers security packages and organises intra-city group activities. It aims to be a one-stop destination for all essential services. For instance, its domestic help verification service is backed by a top-tier security firm whose experts conduct checks, visit the candidate’s house to verify residency, confirm family details and check local police records. The service is available for ₹2,000. “With my age, wisdom and experience, I can continue to be a contributing member of society. Show me one politician in this country who’s less than 60 years old?,” says Menon, whose name resonates prominently in the world of marketing with a resume that boasts several collaborations with industry giants.

We celebrate start-ups when they get significant funding. Menon, on the other hand, had clear focus. “I’ve never been interested in raising money with lots of strings attached,” she says, adding, “If you raise money from venture capital and private equity, your purpose gets hijacked. The only purpose then is profit.” She has never considered external funding; money from family and friends has sufficed.

While Menon’s funding path remains her personal choice, the road to venture capital is often filled with thorns for women entrepreneurs, particularly those above a certain age. Evidence suggests older founders often achieve as much as their younger counterparts but several studies point out a troubling trend among VCs. They favour founders with a ‘blue-flame’ mentality — individuals perceived to have no family commitments or personal distractions, capable of devoting entire energy to their ventures. This not only reflects a preference for perceived adaptability and tech-savviness of younger founders but also denies equal opportunities to older women entrepreneurs. Women secured only 9.3% VC funding in 2023, down from 14.7% in 2021, according to the 2023 annual report of WinPe, a non-profit championing gender diversity in private equity. It highlights widening gender disparity that is way worse than in, say, Europe and U.S. Data from World Bank-backed International Finance Corporation also paints a grim picture. In emerging markets, only 11% seed money goes to start-ups with women in founding teams with figures even lower for late-stage funding.

The discrimination against women entrepreneurs who are advanced in age is underscored by the experience of Nayar, who founded Nykaa in April 2012 with $2 million of her own funds. “The company ran on family funds for two years as I didn’t want to raise money. I wanted to make the metrics happen,” Nayar said in an interview in 2017. “We had good momentum by the time I went to investors. We had access as my husband and I were both bankers.”

In Shark Tank India, a reality TV show where entrepreneurs pitch their business models to a panel of investors, older women entrepreneurs rarely, if ever, get funding. Experts say it’s a mistake to assume that individuals who haven’t built a successful business by 50 are unlikely to succeed. In fact, seasoned founders bring a treasure trove of knowledge and expertise to the table, have a deep understanding of their industries, can see beyond short-term trends and think strategically. Having learnt from mistakes, they approach challenges with calm resilience and so are well-prepared to weather storms, say experts. “As you become older, you’ve dealt with all the early stages of life. Because you’re no longer under pressure, your perspective widens. I see this with all my friends who are late entrepreneurs, both men and women,” says Menon.

Start-ups led by women generate twice as much revenue as those led by men, as per a report by Mass Challenge and BCG. Their study of 350 start-ups revealed that if VCs had invested equally in women and men-founded start-ups, they could have earned an additional $85 million over five years.

However, Naman Jhawar, partner & head of India & SEA at Picus Capital, says investors do not discriminate on the basis of age and gender. “At the end of the day, if you step back, every VC understands that only a 10% success rate will generate return at portfolio level. So, the primary lens they see from is whether a team can scale up the venture to a certain level,” he says. “As long as the founders understand the product, the model and the sales motion (the path a sales team takes to reach goals), there’s no talk about a person’s gender or age,” he says. Interestingly, Picus’ current India portfolio does not have any start-up led by senior women.

Shetty says VCs’ interest largely hinges on the nature of the business. “There are certain professions where experience counts for a lot more than youthful aggression. So, a VC looking at the top line might look at it differently,” he says.

However, many women do not want to be pigeonholed into categories of women entrepreneurs or senior entrepreneurs, let alone senior women entrepreneurs. Alpana Parida of Tiivra Ventures, a rider-centric start-up, has never cared much for stereotypes. She led marketing and merchandising at Tanishq and worked for a grocery company in U.S. before founding DY Works, a branding and design firm credited with rebranding Air India, collaborating with BRICS Bank in Shanghai, creating the Bingo brand and partnering with several big FMCG companies. But she always wanted to make a dent on the global stage with an Indian brand. While doing a study for PepsiCo on India’s young men, she realised brands are not talking about how the outdated norms of toxic patriarchy have been replaced by a new, evolved masculinity. “I needed to create a brand for men. I was also looking for a category where there was a possibility of making a difference with intelligence and design,” she says. This made her launch composite fibre (glass and carbon) helmets in April 2020. Most of the time and funds were spent on research, technology, pooling talent and designing products from scratch. An imported fibre helmet costs upwards of ₹25,000 but Tiivra helmets are priced around ₹10,000. Last year, in six months, Tiivra Ventures generated ₹4 crore in net sales. For FY25, Parida is targeting more than ₹10 crore. The brand has grown almost 2X this quarter. Parida expects 3X growth by the end of the financial year.

Having raised ₹24 crore, Parida acknowledges the connections she has amassed at this stage of her life. Part of her funding journey was bootstrapped, while the rest came from friends and family in fairly sizable businesses. “Now, if I take the VC route, I don’t see it as that challenging,” she says. The nuances of a business can be mastered with experience, often through setbacks that mature into valuable lessons over time. “As an entrepreneur, you need to have risk-taking capabilities. Along with courage, it also takes a lot of white hair and sleepless nights,” she says on a lighter note.