Why women entrepreneurs still struggle to scale in A&M

On November 19, 2014, the first Women's Entrepreneurship Day was celebrated at the United Nations in New York City. Founded by social entrepreneur Wendy Diamond, the day emerged to empower women globally. 

Women’s entrepreneurship is not a recent phenomenon. It spans centuries and includes women who built businesses long before they were allowed financial independence. In 1739, sixteen-year-old Eliza Lucas Pinckney took charge of her family’s plantations and developed a highly profitable indigo industry. In the early 1900s, Madam C.J. Walker created and marketed her own hair care products, building a company that generated significant wealth in an era when Black women faced both economic and social barriers. These leaders redefined what was possible despite the structures working against them.

In India’s advertising and marketing industry, that pioneering mindset was embodied by Tara Sinha. In 1955, at the age of 23, she played a key role in establishing Clarion Advertising Services and went on to become the first Indian woman to lead an advertising agency. At a time when access to higher education for women was still limited, Sinha completed her Senior Cambridge School Certificate and later earned a CAM Diploma in Advertising in the UK — laying the foundation for a career that would open doors for generations of women in Indian advertising.

Nearly seven decades later, the industry she helped shape is transformed. Digital has overtaken print, influencers share space with celebrities, and data now informs decisions once driven by instinct. Yet conversations with today’s women agency founders reveal how much remains unchanged. The barriers are less visible but often more complex and more draining to articulate. The persistence of those obstacles is matched only by the persistence of the women confronting them.

The invisible structure of exclusion

When women founders in India’s advertising and marketing industry speak about barriers, they rarely mention doors that are visibly shut. Instead, they describe something more nuanced: the quiet presumption that they don’t quite belong; the suggestion that their business models are too ambitious; or the tendency to interpret their assertiveness as a personal flaw rather than a leadership strength.

"The biggest invisible barrier I've had to chip away at is the industry's deep attachment to the comfort of the traditional agency model," says Rekha Rao, founder of OON, a women-led collective that assembles bespoke teams for each brief. "Clients love OON's proposition, but many remain in a 'wait-and-watch' mode because our collective model challenges how they've always worked."

"The quiet barrier was legitimacy," says Ambika Sharma, Founder and Chief Strategist at Pulp Strategy. "As a woman founder, you are often expected to justify your capability long before anyone evaluates your work. I learned to build without seeking approval."

For others, exclusion takes on an even bigger shape. It comes in the assumption that women are capable of creating but not scaling. 

Ramya Ramachandran, Founder & CEO of Whoppl, says this unconscious bias follows many women-led businesses."The quiet barrier was the assumption that women can create but can't scale." It's the unconscious belief that women might have good ideas, but lack the business discipline to turn those ideas into empires. That creativity and strategic rigour are somehow mutually exclusive when the founder is a woman. 

Lakshmi Balasubramanian, Founder of Greenroom, faced a double challenge. Not only was she a woman in a male-dominated ecosystem, she was significantly younger than many of the leaders shaping the influencer marketing industry when she entered it.

“Being young and a young woman meant many senior industry members didn’t take me seriously,” she says. Influencer marketing was still new, often brushed off as frivolous. “So I was, too,” she added. 

What changed everything, Balasubramanian says, was the work itself. "The moment you speak with clarity, bring real insight to the table, and deliver results, the tone in the room shifts. Expertise has a way of cutting through bias."

But here is the exhausting reality: male founders are rarely asked to validate their expertise before they are granted a seat at the table. Competence is assumed until disproven. For women founders, the dynamic is reversed, doubt is the default, and credibility must be earned before it is acknowledged. Even after they prove themselves, the scrutiny seldom eases.

What would they change? 

One thing that all our experts would want to redesign is how the industry views women's leadership.

"I would change how the industry interprets assertiveness in women," says Sharma. "When men are firm, it is leadership. When women are firm, it becomes a personality discussion. This single bias keeps women out of decision-making layers."

If a woman is collaborative, she risks being seen as weak. If she is decisive, she is labelled difficult. Male CEOs are praised as “visionary” when they are demanding; women displaying the same behaviour are described as “hard to work with.” Identical actions, filtered through different expectations, lead to opposite judgments.

Rao believes the redesign must start at a structural level. "Mandatory gender balance, at least 50% women in mid- and senior-leadership roles, extending all the way to the boardroom." But she's quick to add that representation alone isn't enough. "The real inequity lies in how the industry treats mid-career women navigating marriage, motherhood, caregiving and identity shifts."

In her view, what women need is not just flexible working hours, but flexible expectations. "Imagine an industry where a woman's KPIs flex with her life stage, where leaders tune into her reality instead of forcing her to choose between ambition and life. That shift—from time-based to responsibility-based flexibility would transform retention, loyalty, and leadership pipelines for women."

Balasubramanian focuses on a more immediate issue: working hours. "The biggest change we need is discipline around working hours. Our industry normalised starting late, ending even later, and expecting people to be on call at 10 or 11 pm. For women who juggle home and family responsibilities, this culture is simply unsustainable."

This isn’t about lowering standards or offering special treatment. It’s about acknowledging that an industry long designed around the schedules of men with full-time support at home continues to sideline half the talent pool — unless those women are willing to burn out or deprioritise major parts of their lives.

The future they are building 

Ask these founders what a women-led future looks like, and a clear vision emerges, one aimed not at retribution but at redesign.

"It's a future where women no longer feel the need to constantly prove their competence," says Rao. "Where their voices are heard without fear of repercussions, where pay and rewards are equal, and where policies are designed to empower rather than constrain."

It is a future where success is not measured by traditionally masculine metrics or the expectation to be ‘tough as nails’ but by the freedom to lead authentically. "Women who balance roles as mothers, daughters, partners, colleagues and leaders," Rao continues. "We don't need only the extraordinary role models. We need visibility for the everyday excellence of women who show up, lead with heart, and quietly transform the industry from within."

Sharma hopes for an environment that is less performative and more strategic. “Women leaders bring a clarity of thought and a structural way of working that the A&M ecosystem needs. A woman-led future is one where leadership is earned through competence, where representation is not token, and where creative ambition is matched with operational discipline."

For Balasubramanian, signs of that future are already visible. "Our team today has more women than men, not by design, but because the women entering A&M are exceptionally sharp, hardworking, and driven. Gen Z has rewritten the script: in their world, there's no 'male or female leader,' just capable people. And that's the most hopeful shift of all."

Ultimately, the future these leaders imagine extends beyond the industry itself. It challenges norms around work and caregiving, celebrates diverse models of leadership, and recognises that motherhood and ambition are not mutually exclusive. And in that future, the next Tara Sinha won’t have to be the “first” anything, because by then, women at the top will hopefully be a common sight.