“Indian women think out of the box because they have struggled so much, unlike most entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley who think like each other and develop similar stupid solutions like each other,” says Vivek Wadhwa, a vocal voice in the Valley on female entrepreneurship.

By Rituparna Chatterjee (Contributor, The Economic Times)

In many ways, Silicon Valley’s Indian women entrepreneurs find themselves in a situation similar to what their male counterparts encountered in the 1980s. They had then formed The Indus Entrepreneurs, now better known as TiE, which today is the world’s largest entrepreneurial body.

A handful of fledgling organisations like TiE Women’s Forum and Women 2.0 are hoping to do the same – help women entrepreneurs help each other.

“We were like immigrant entrepreneurs back then, with no powerful networks – say, the Stanford alum network – to help us out. So, we made our own,” says Angie Chang, co-founder of Women 2.0, which reaches out to over 30,000 women entrepreneurs. Sure, there are a few unique advantages of being Indian.

Unparalleled family support in a foreign land is one of them. For instance, Sankar started Piazza out of her brother’s garage.

» Read the full article on The Economic Times or download the PDF here.