India’s startup culture has seen explosive growth in the last decade, becoming the world’s third-largest, with over 120 unicorns and over 140,000 registered startups. Yet, underpinning the glory of this famed innovation boom is a dismal gender disparity at the leadership level. Only 7% of the founders of 120 unicorns are women, says the Longhouse 2025 report, a sobering fact about women founders that demands a closer look.
Quantifying the Gap
Out of 302 founders who have driven India’s unicorn success stories, a mere ~21 are women. This means that over 93% of unicorns are led solely or predominantly by male founders, underscoring a glaring disparity in representation at the highest tiers of startup leadership.
Geographic Distribution
The presence of women founders is concentrated in metro cities, mirroring access to infrastructure, capital, and professional networks:
- Delhi-NCR and Mumbai account for 33% each of women founders.
- Bengaluru, a major startup hub, hosts 24% of the total women unicorn founders.
- Hyderabad accounts for 5%, while other regions are significantly underrepresented or unreported.
This distribution points to an urban skew, where women founders are primarily emerging from cities with mature startup ecosystems.
Founding Team Composition
While most unicorns have 2–3 founders, very few of these founding teams include women. Moreover:
- The median founding team size across unicorns is 2.5, yet women are rarely included in co-founding roles.
- Solo female founders are virtually absent, suggesting persistent structural and societal barriers to independent entrepreneurship at scale.
Educational & Professional Backgrounds
Although the report does not isolate educational backgrounds by gender, broader findings reveal that:
- 80% of unicorn founders have a technical background, with a strong representation from IITs and IIMs.
- Given the traditionally low female enrolment in these institutions (particularly in engineering), the talent pipeline may be skewed, contributing to lower representation at the startup leadership level.
Furthermore, the dominance of male-heavy professional environments like management consulting, software engineering, and BFSI the top industries where unicorn founders gained experience has a compounding effect on women’s progression into founder roles.
Structural Challenges
The underrepresentation of women founders is not a reflection of capability but of systemic hurdles, which include:
- Unequal access to venture capital: Numerous studies (beyond this report) have documented how female entrepreneurs raise significantly less capital than their male counterparts.
- Limited mentorship and visibility: With few female role models in unicorn leadership, aspiring women founders often lack the networks and sponsorship needed to scale.
- Gender bias in hiring and team formation: Founding teams often form among former colleagues or peer networks spaces where women remain underrepresented, particularly in tech and product roles.
As Vaisali Shah, CEO of Moving Pixels (Ahmedabad-based creative production house), insightfully puts it:
“Ideas have no gender, but the receiver does. Giving women a small share of the cake and denying them the scale they deserve is one of today’s biggest speed breakers. The real game changer will be the day women-led businesses are no longer treated as exceptions, but are backed as the norm. That’s when the economy and innovation will truly take off.”
Missed Opportunities for the Ecosystem
The lack of gender diversity in unicorn leadership undermines the richness of innovation. Studies globally have shown that:
- Diverse teams outperform homogenous ones in problem-solving and creativity.
- Products and services designed by all-male teams risk being non-inclusive or biased.
- More balanced leadership can expand market reach, particularly in consumer sectors like health, education, and financial inclusion—key areas in India’s startup boom.
Although these insights are well-documented in global literature, the Longhouse report offers India-specific data to validate the starting point: that women are not equally represented at the top.
Yukti Gaur, Ceo & co-founder – IP India, has a strong opinion on this:
“One of the main reasons for women not in senior roles is that they are considered ‘moody’, ’emotional’ and ‘dramatic”. Also, men do not like women dominating in higher positions because most of them are raised in a high-form patriarchy where only the father makes decisions, and the wife follows suit. They usually have a problem abiding by a woman superior because it hurts their ego.”
Outlook: What Needs to Change
While the Longhouse report does not speculate on future gender trends, its findings invite critical questions and policy reflection:
- How can India’s elite educational institutions and incubators foster more women-led startups?
- What role should VCs and angel networks play in actively backing female entrepreneurs?
- Can corporate and policy interventions help normalise women in leadership across tech and high-growth sectors?
At present, the report makes it clear: India’s unicorn success is not yet a gender-equal story.
Addressing The Gap
The 7% representation of women among India’s unicorn founders is a stark indicator of gender disparity in high-growth entrepreneurship. While the overall startup ecosystem thrives, the voices and visions of women remain largely absent from its highest echelons.
Addressing this gap is not just a social imperative but a strategic one. The next phase of India’s innovation story must be inclusive, or risk leaving behind vast reservoirs of untapped potential.
Insights From: The Evolution of Unicorn Founders Longhouse Report 2025
Also Read: Women Make Up Just 12-14% of India’s Gaming Workforce: AIGDF Report
