5 Cool Women With Hot Startups 5 Women Entrepreneurs to Watch Out for in 2016

The increase in internet and smartphone penetration has dramatically changed the way businesses are conducted. Not just that, it has also opened up a plethora of opportunities for the females.

More and more women are now taking the plunge to pursue their dreams and ambitions. Balancing career and entrepreneurial aspirations with home, safety and social accountability with business mobility, women have been witness to the unfolding of a vast canvas to express themselves.

Entrepreneur India has penned down five dynamic women entrepreneurs. Take a look.

1. Keeping Families at Home, Around the Dining Table:

Despite some great eating out option today, nothing beats the pleasure of a good home-cooked meal. And that is exactly what Sukhmani Bedi is doing through her less-than-a-year-old startup. Bedi along with her co-founder Niyaz Laiq founded Better Butter, a social discovery platform for recipes which allows its users to share their favourite recipes from family classics to their own inventions and discover new recipes from households across India and even from celebrity chefs.

"There are 40 million Indian women online today between the ages of 25 and 45. Even if we assume that at least 50 per cent of them have an interest in cooking, the potential is huge. Through BetterButter, we want to touch the lives of every Indian household. We want to become the Google for recipes," said Bedi.

Within five months of its launch, Bedi managed to raise an undisclosed amount in seed funding led by Delhi-based growX ventures. Prior to starting her own venture, she worked with companies like IMF, Deloitte, and Phillips. Planning to launch their app soon, Bedi aims to make BetterButter synonymous with cooking in India.

2. Instagram For Women's Fashion Attire

Founded in May 2015 by Rashi Menda, who holds a degree in Economics and Finance from University of Minnesota, Zapyle is like an Instagram for women's fashion attire, which allows its customers to discover, sell and buy pre-owned fashion attire. Prior to launching her start-up, Menda used to work with EY (Ernst and Young), which is a multinational professional services firm headquartered in London.

"Two years ago, I'd look at my own closet with an assorted collection of unopened, unworn shopping bags sitting on the floor – and still find myself saying, "I have nothing to wear!' I wanted to change this. I wanted to create a platform that assists pre-loved clothes and accessories in finding new homes in new wardrobes. And thus, Zapyle was born," opines Menda.

3. Providing Folks With Convenient Yet Anonymous Access to Life Coaches

Sensing this huge gap and being triggered by a personal experience of a friend, who lost her life at IIT due to placement pressure, motivated Richa Singh to found YourDOST to provide people with convenient yet anonymous access to experts consisting of life coaches, psychologists and other experienced individuals.

"When I was at IIT Guwahati, my hostel-mate committed suicide due to the anticipation of bad placement. None of us had any clue of her suffering before she took the drastic step. Further, when I started working, people around me were stressed due to job pressure and relationship issues. We want to make sure we are connecting to connect and not just to upvote. With this belief, we started yourdost.co," said Richa Singh, Founder, YourDost.

Started in partnership with IIM-B alumunus Puneet Manuja and Prakhar Verma, a computer science graduate from BMSCE, Bangalore, in last 10 months of its operations, YourDOST has received tremendous response from the market with close to 70,000 users so far and the number is growing at about 40 per cent a month.

4. "Life is Combination of Magic and Pasta'

Passion for cooking inspired Vinita Jain to explore Italian cuisine and therefore she founded Vini's Food. Jain's startup provides handy and homemade sauces to prepare dishes like pasta and pizza effortlessly. Along with the range of Italian sauces they also have homemade Salsa which adds abundant flavor to any meal or snack.

Jain is one of the successful women entrepreneurs in Bengaluru. The inspiration behind her entrepreneurial journey is no one else but her own son who had food allergies. She always used to cook food items at home for him. Slowly and steadily she turned her passion for cooking commercial and now she is running her startup successfully for last two years and that too without any investment from outside source.

5. Learn to Cook in Style

To fill the gap between the people willing to teach cooking and those who wanted to learn, Shree Periakaruppan founded Foodology. Shree's Foodology is a unique startup where folks can learn and teach.

These five women entrepreneurs are the rising starts of entrepreneurial ecosystem. Now we have to see that what 2016 holds for them and how quickly they will excel in their sector and establish their foot in the startup world.

Do you know of any woman entrepreneur who is slowly and steadily getting there? DM her details to our Twitter handle @entrepreneurIND and we will get in touch with her. You're welcome!

(We had earlier mentioned Sara Koshy and Marsha Thompson being associated with Foodology. The information was incorrect and has been removed from this article. Sara Koshy and Marsha Thompson are not associated with Foodology in any capacity. We apologise for the inadvertent error.)