Women entrepreneurs navigate entrepreneurship within systems that were largely designed without them in mind. This masterclass explored how gender-biased design—across products, platforms, financial systems, and institutions—continues to shape unequal entrepreneurial outcomes, and how technology and inclusive system design can help close these gaps.

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The session opened with an interactive Design Bias Bingo, which surfaced lived experiences from participants:

- a young female techie was rejected a formal credit despite her educational and professional background,

- another women complained how the gym dumbells don’t fit her palms

- digital apps like Swiggy are not so easy to navigate, and many other everyday products are primarily designed and tested on male users.

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These stories reinforced a critical insight: design bias is systemic, not incidental. When 90% of users may be women, yet interfaces privilege male patterns of use, exclusion becomes embedded at scale.

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Participants examined examples of inclusive design wins - from Canva outperforming Photoshop through intuitive, visual-first design, to the widespread adoption of subtitles originally designed for deaf audiences. The bottom-line was that when something is designed for the most excluded, it improves outcomes for everyone.

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Meena then contrasted rule-based systems—common in fintech and credit products—with relationship-based systems, which better reflect women’s realities. Drawing on Niiti’s ground research in women’s financial inclusion, she highlighted that despite the fact that women have a higher rate of loan repayment, they still find it difficult to secure higher ticket loans independently? Why do women often demonstrate stronger repayment behaviour? That’s because social credibility, community acceptance, and relational accountability matter deeply to them. Systems that ignore these motivations systematically exclude women.

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Through Niiti’s Grassroots Tea Corporation (GTC) case, the session illustrated relationship-based system design in practice—spanning collectivisation, business ideation, market access, peer mentorship, and training-the-trainer models. When women are enabled as peer leaders, communities rally and enterprises sustain.

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The session concluded with a call to action: system change requires both demand and design. Women must advocate not just for individual access, but for redesigning the systems themselves—creating small but powerful circles of change that shift incentives, behaviours, and outcomes across ecosystems.