You see her by the roadside in Chennai, painstakingly rolling out jasmine strings by the dozen to sell at crossroads when the evening traffic winds its way home through the jam-packed streets.

You see her in Mumbai doing brisk business at her vegetable stall - weighing, wooing, calculating and encouraging all at once.

You see her face above the shop shelf in Bangalore, beckoning you to buy her personally designed garment label for kids and women.

You see her behind a computer in her travel agency in Delhi, booking your tickets, applying for your visa and planning your itinerary.

You see her in Kullu, carefully arranging her array of shawls and cardigans at the roadside shack,

determined to bargain for a good price.

You see her in the outskirts of Goa, carrying a load of the day's catch from the sea to the local fish market.

What do they all have in common? They are women entrepreneurs, medium and small, determined to make a livelihood on their own.

And their problems? Here again there is a common thread, despite the difference in their scale of business. Women entrepreneurs urban or rural, with micro enterprises or medium-scale businesses face challenges and barriers that need interventions and attitudinal changes if they have to go up the value chain and celebrate their entrepreneurship.

First and foremost, entrepreneurship requires financial assistance and it is here that the battle mostly begins. "Theoretically speaking loans are very possible, but when you really go to get credit banks demand a collateral. And women who rarely have property to their names come back empty handed. This is where the entrepreneurs' struggle begins. However, in the rural setting, micro-credit for very small enterprises has started helping women in some States to reach out of the poverty cycle. But these success stories rarely go beyond the Kasba-level markets. If women want to go beyond this level, it is very difficult as loans are hard to come by," says Ranjana Kumari, Director of the Centre for Social Research and co-ordinator of the Joint Action Front for Women.

And reiterating her words is Lakshmi Venkatesan, Founding trustee and Executive Vice-President Bharati Yuva Shakti Trust (BYST), who has ample experience trying to get entrepreneurs on stream. "Women may have the best reputation with a repayment rate of 98 per cent in micro-credit schemes, but these are group activities. The problem arises when any of them want to graduate to the next step. They have no access to seed capital. One has seen that almost always a woman entrepreneur gets her initial investment by selling jewellery, seeking the loan shark or asking family and friends to cough up resources," she says.

The experience of several women entrepreneurs stands testimony to this biggest hurdle that confronts them in the face. One of them in the urban setting recalls her effort in vain to secure a bank loan. Jayshree Joshi Eashwar who along with her husband set up an organic food store, Dubden Healthy Living, in the Capital recently and has experience running one in Bangalore earlier. She found that banks had all kinds of criteria, which she couldn't fulfil merely because she had taken a sabbatical from work for a year or so. "I took a sabbatical after working for several years as a book editor and a qualitative market researcher, so that I could pursue my interests for a while and spend time with my daughter," says Jayshree, who is a Masters in International Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University.

"The bank wanted to know why I was not gainfully employed, some even hinted at the fact that I was 50, over the age for a loan. I don't know why people think in a box. They require you to fill out these huge forms where if you don't fulfil a particular category, you are off their list." Jayshree

emphasises that for years she was the one who gave advice to MNCs and the like on how to spend their crores, but banks were not willing to give a loan for such a project that not only provide

her a livelihood, but generates jobs and sustains organic farmers in many of the rural areas.

"Our effort is to make more and more people eat clean and simultaneously encourage more and more producers to go the organic way. Is it that I am not capable of gleaning a lifetime's research and starting on my own at 50? It's got nothing to do with age, it's the spirit that counts."

Jayshree even tried a women's loan route, though "it galls me to have to go to a place that deals only with women having been brought up with gender equality as the norm." Here she found that they were offering her just a few lakhs, an amount she could raise on her own. By contrast, some of the banks said that "what we wanted was too small and they only fund in crores."

Jayshree lays the blame on the way loans are administered today, mostly through direct selling agents. "The person who fills the form merely uses a check-list for criteria and cannot appreciate the nuances of the venture. The people in banks who are capable of putting on their thinking caps are not accessible - they live in their ivory towers. So, people like us who are in a project for more than just profits lose out," she says. However, Jayshree at least has a joint venture with her husband, Ganesh, and that makes things a bit easier.

Ask Masooma Ranalvi, Director, Source Publications, who runs the Delhi side of the book business independent of her husband. "Very few are willing to take women seriously. You find them constantly looking behind your shoulders for a husband, father or brother who is backing you. Though things are changing slowly, you require enormous amounts of self-confidence, an understanding of the ground realities and a leadership potential to take the team with you." She finds that it is not easy to get business out of people and is saddened that sometimes being a woman gets you the business, "especially in a city like Delhi." But Masooma feels that women have the inherent qualities required for entrepreneurship.

"It's the mother who introduces her child to language and is it not surprising that it is the same woman who has been silent for centuries? She is not to speak outside the home and can only do things with family support. For a majority of women options do not exist, hence if a woman becomes an entrepreneur, it is a very special thing. She is unique and has been able to break a lot of barriers," she says.

Lakshmi Venkatesh makes some crucial linkages if these barriers have to be broken on a large scale. She points out that though the working women population has increased from 13 per cent in 1997 to 25 per cent in 2001, senior managers and high-end including entrepreneurs are hardly three to four per cent. In the informal sector where mostly women are placed, it is the lack of education that creates an important barrier. In the East and South Asian region, India has the highest number of women (47 per cent) who have studied only till Class V. "Which means that they have the ability to deal with a suitable micro-credit enterprise, but how will they move up the value chain? Entrepreneurship will suffer."

Lakshmi stresses the fact that the Indian education system too does not encourage problem solving and original thinking. Instead it leans on rote learning. And that it has been found that the higher the education level in a region, the lower the spirit of entrepreneurship, with a majority of the educated carrying a mindset of wanting jobs and not creating them. For instance, Kerala has the highest literacy rate, but a 50 per cent unemployment rate as well.

What is even more worrying is that despite national hype of the country shining, the employment rate is steadily decreasing with a three-million unemployed population in 2004. Added to this will be the 20 million people in the country who are going to join the work force this year, half of them will obviously be women. "With no jobs available, creating entrepreneurs is the key," says Lakshmi. And you bet she hit the nail on the head.