The motivations that drive women to pursue entrepreneurial aspirations vary as widely as the businesses they operate. For Rina Akter, after her husband left her, the struggle to balance her care responsibilities for her family with her work and the instability of her income as a domestic labourer pushed her to start her own small tailoring business on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh. “I came to the decision that if I start my own business, I’ll be able to take care of my two girls,” she explains.

Also the primary breadwinner for her family, for Ou Sokphanna, who lost her leg to a mining explosion in 2003, her decision to start her homegrown handicraft business was motivated by widespread discrimination and limited employment opportunities in her home of Siem Reap province, Cambodia. “Starting my own business was a good option for me. I no longer face discrimination, I’m able to support my family and I’ve grown in confidence,” she says.

Business owners like Rina and Sokphanna, who are driven to initiate business ventures in the absence of decent employment opportunities and to support the welfare and survival of themselves and their families, initiate their businesses largely from a place of necessity.

Meanwhile, hailing from across the border in neighbouring Viet Nam, Tran Khanh Dung, founder and CEO of tech start-up, Rayo, was in a position to identify an opportunity for innovation at scale and to seize it, motivated to start her business to make web browsing more accessible for persons with disabilities. “There are no existing solutions that effectively tackle the issue of web accessibility at scale, so our team decided to step up and solve the problem,” she explains.

Similarly identifying an opportunity to fill a market gap while tackling a social issue, Shristi Shrestha founded eco-friendly sanitary pad company, Abu Dhakka, inspired by a vision of supporting women and protecting the environment while promoting localised production in her home country. According to Shristi, “making sanitary pads in Nepal is something new. Our main objective is for everyone to use biodegradable sanitary pads.”