Challenges and resilience of transgender entrepreneurs

Abstract

Transgender individuals are the most deteriorated individuals in society, they encounter challenges and difficulties from the time they violate the social norms, they are also humiliated from their biological families and are sent to live a life of their own. In India, the Mughal period was termed to be the golden years for transgender individuals. It was after colonisation and implementation of the Criminal Tribes Act 1871 transgender individuals were treated brutally and eventually begging and sex work became their only source of income. Alongside, entrepreneurship proved to be a success factor as it brought the shunned newlinewomen into the mainstream society. Thereby, entrepreneurship increases social capital and newlinethus encourages transgenders in job creation activities. Despite a dire situation, there are transgender individuals who have faced all odds and have proved to set benchmarks in the society in varied fields. There are sporadic transgender individual entrepreneurs in the country who have paved their way into the entrepreneurial world, which is an important area to be explored. The study focuses on the motivations for the transgender entrepreneurs, challenges faced by transgender entrepreneurs, resilience factors of transgender entrepreneurs and a model for a transgender entrepreneur to start entrepreneurship with ease. A grounded theory method was employed in the study with a sample of 22 participants in India who have started the business after coming out as a transgender individual and who have started the business at least for six months on the day of interview. The findings for the motivations of transgender individuals are that all the participants received an external support to start the business, they had a strong endurance to forego begging and commercial sex work and the participants had a strong passion and interest to start the business.