In many cases, women are named as owners for financial and administrative reasons with no active role to play, which overstates true entrepreneurship amongst women. Of all women-owned enterprises, a majority are single person enterprises, with the largest group represented by rural non-farm home-based business owners at 38 per cent, followed by urban self-employed women solopreneurs at 31 per cent, who usually work from home. According to the study, the other dominant segments include rural agripreneurs who are farm-based business owners at 18 per cent and small business owners at 14 per cent - split across urban (6 per cent) and rural (8 per cent) - employing less than 10 employees and contributing most to employment generation. Finally, there are the scalers, who employ more than 10 people and account for less than one per cent. In total, these women entrepreneurs provide direct employment to an estimated 22 to 27 million people today.

The report projects an opportunity to accelerate both quantity and quality of entrepreneurship to create over 30 million women-owned enterprises out of which 12 million can generate employment.