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Bengaluru, October 22, 2026: Aditya Singh, a Class 12 IBDP student at Greenwood High International School, Bengaluru, is working to understand and address the barriers that prevent many women entrepreneurs from accessing formal credit. Through his youth-led initiative, Unseen CEOs, that locates women entrepreneurs, examines their pricing, borrowing, and reinvestment habits, Aditya is exploring how business planning, financial literacy, and better connections with formal lenders can help women running micro businesses become visible and credit-ready. For many women running small and micro businesses, the challenge extends beyond the availability of finance. Documentation, pricing, financial literacy, and limited familiarity with formal financial systems can make it difficult to demonstrate credit readiness and access appropriate sources of funding.
As part of Unseen CEOs, developed in association with Jagriti Foundation, which works across more than 240 Tier 2 and 3 districts where over 70% of India’s population lives, Aditya personally interviewed more than 200 women micro-entrepreneurs across Jagriti’s partner districts, translating each conversation into a structured business pitch, and shortlisted 10 for detailed intervention. His two-year research spans 36 Indian states and union territories and examines gaps in access to formal microcredit, including the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana. It found that the scheme’s impact on women’s enterprise creation varies threefold by state, that literacy is its strongest moderator, and that targeting gaps leave over 20 million women entrepreneurs underserved. He also developed an online platform connecting entrepreneurs with potential lenders and is currently exploring funding through microfinance and venture capital.
Talking about the initiative, Mrs. Niru Agarwal, Vice Chairperson & Managing Trustee, Greenwood High International School, says, “We believe education should give students the confidence to look beyond the classroom, ask meaningful questions and engage with challenges that affect society. Aditya’s work is an example of how curiosity can develop into sustained research and action. He has taken the time to speak directly with entrepreneurs, understand the barriers they face and explore how technology, financial literacy and business planning can come together to address a larger issue. We are pleased to see him pursue this work with commitment and purpose.”
Commenting on what prompted him to work on this initiative, Aditya Singh, student of Greenwood High International School, said, “When I started speaking to women entrepreneurs, I realised that many of them were already running businesses and making important decisions every day, but they were not necessarily equipped to approach formal lenders. The gap was not simply about whether credit was available. It was also about whether the business was prepared to access it and whether the entrepreneur was visible to the financial system. That is what led me to explore a model that focuses on business planning, financial literacy, and credit readiness alongside access to lenders.”
To supply capital to initiatives, Aditya has built an online matching platform connecting micro-entrepreneurs directly with lenders. Currently, he is designing a layered funding pathway which aims to attract VC and microfinance capital for two to three of the strongest ventures in his pipeline. Rather than a temporary one-off grant, the goal is to create a replication toolkit that lets the model run independently in new districts without needing him to be present. This ensures that the pipeline lasts longer than any singular cohort. A working alliance of financial and advisory partners has been assembled for this project on gender-inclusive credit access, lending and credit-access design, loan verification and risk advisory, etc.
“Most of these women are not failing at business. They are having trouble with being visible to a system that was never designed to see them. This observation shaped a verification framework that we are currently working on to flag a problem that went unnoticed: businesses registered in the name of women but run by a male relative, a pattern that undermines the entire premise of women-focused lending,” adds Aditya.
Aditya’s larger objective is to develop a framework that can be replicated across different communities and districts across India, helping more women entrepreneurs navigate the journey from running an informal or small business to becoming prepared to engage with formal financial institutions. By combining field research with technology and business planning, the initiative seeks to explore how women-owned enterprises can be better positioned to access capital and build sustainable businesses.
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