When Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman stood before Parliament to present the Union Budget 2026, one announcement stood out as a potential turning point for millions of women across India: the introduction of SHE-Mark certification and SHE Marts. These two initiatives, deceptively simple in concept, represent a fundamental shift in how India thinks about women's economic participation — moving from credit-led livelihoods to ownership-led businesses.
If you are a woman entrepreneur, a self-help group member, or someone who cares about gender equity in India's economy, here is everything you need to know about SHE-Mark, SHE Marts, and how they could reshape the landscape for women-led businesses in India.
What Is SHE-Mark?
SHE stands for Self Help Entrepreneur, and the SHE-Mark is a government-backed certification that identifies and validates products made by women-led businesses and self-help groups. Think of it as a quality assurance and origin certification that tells consumers: this product was created by a woman-owned or woman-led enterprise.
The SHE-Mark builds on the foundation laid by the Lakhpati Didi programme, which has helped millions of women in self-help groups earn over one lakh rupees annually. The Lakhpati Didi programme proved that with access to credit, training, and community support, women can build viable livelihoods. SHE-Mark takes this a step further — it gives these women a brand, a marketplace, and institutional recognition that can help them scale from survival-level enterprises to growth-oriented businesses.
The certification is expected to cover products across categories including handicrafts, food products, textiles, personal care items, and agricultural goods — the sectors where women-led self-help groups are most active.
What Are SHE Marts?
SHE Marts are dedicated marketplaces — both physical and digital — where SHE-Mark certified products will be sold. These marketplaces address one of the biggest challenges facing women entrepreneurs in India: market access.
Many women-led businesses, particularly those in rural and semi-urban areas, produce excellent products but lack the channels to reach consumers beyond their immediate communities. SHE Marts create those channels by providing dedicated retail spaces, online storefronts, and institutional procurement pathways.
The vision is to create a national network of SHE Marts in towns and cities across India, supported by a digital platform that enables women entrepreneurs to sell their products to consumers nationwide. For consumers, SHE Marts offer a curated shopping experience with the assurance that their purchases directly support women-led businesses.
Why This Matters: The State of Women Entrepreneurship in India
India's women entrepreneurship numbers tell a story of enormous potential constrained by systemic barriers. Women own approximately 20% of all MSMEs in India, but their enterprises tend to be smaller, less funded, and less profitable than those owned by men. The reasons are well-documented: limited access to capital, restricted mobility, unequal domestic responsibilities, societal expectations, and a business ecosystem that was not designed with women in mind.
The economic impact of closing this gender gap would be substantial. McKinsey has estimated that advancing women's equality in India could add $770 billion to the country's GDP by 2025. While that deadline has passed, the underlying opportunity remains — and initiatives like SHE-Mark and SHE Marts are designed to capture it.
The stress of navigating these barriers takes a toll. Research from LinkedIn in 2024 found that 63% of Indian employees report stress in hybrid work models, and women are disproportionately affected because they often bear the additional burden of household responsibilities alongside their professional work. For women entrepreneurs who are running businesses from home while managing families, the stress is even more acute. SHE-Mark and SHE Marts aim to reduce at least the market access barrier, freeing women entrepreneurs to focus on production and quality rather than the constant struggle to find customers.
From Lakhpati Didi to SHE-Mark: The Evolution
The Lakhpati Didi programme has been one of India's most successful women's economic empowerment initiatives. By providing women in self-help groups with access to microfinance, skills training, and community support, it has helped over one crore women achieve annual incomes of one lakh rupees or more.
But the programme's architects recognized a limitation. Most Lakhpati Didi participants were engaged in activities that generated income but did not build businesses. The difference is significant: income generation means earning money through labor or basic trade, while business ownership means building an enterprise that can grow, employ others, and generate wealth over time.
SHE-Mark certification is the bridge between these two stages. By giving women-led products a recognized brand and a dedicated marketplace, it enables women to move from selling commodities in local markets to building branded businesses with loyal customer bases. A woman who makes pickles is a laborer. A woman who makes SHE-Mark certified pickles is a brand owner. The product may be the same, but the economic identity — and the growth trajectory — is fundamentally different.
How to Get SHE-Mark Certification
While the detailed guidelines are still being finalized, here is what we know about the SHE-Mark certification process based on the Budget announcement and subsequent government communications.
Eligibility: Businesses must be at least 51% owned or led by women. This includes individual proprietorships, partnerships, companies, and self-help groups. Products from registered SHGs under the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) and Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana (DAY-NRLM) will receive expedited certification.
Quality Standards: SHE-Mark is not just a gender label — it is a quality certification. Products must meet specified quality standards that will vary by category. This is crucial for consumer trust and for differentiating SHE-Mark products from generic alternatives.
Application Process: Applications will be processed through the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) portal. SHG members can apply through their group facilitators or directly through district-level MSME offices.
Certification Duration: SHE-Mark certification will be valid for a fixed period (expected to be two to three years) with renewal requirements, ensuring that certified products continue to meet quality standards.
Benefits for Women Entrepreneurs
The benefits of SHE-Mark certification and access to SHE Marts extend across multiple dimensions.
Market Access
The most immediate benefit is access to SHE Marts — physical retail spaces and digital platforms dedicated to SHE-Mark products. This eliminates the chicken-and-egg problem that many women entrepreneurs face: you need customers to grow, but you need market presence to find customers.
Brand Credibility
A government-backed certification provides instant credibility with consumers, retailers, and institutional buyers. In a market flooded with products, the SHE-Mark differentiates women-led businesses and gives consumers a reason to choose their products.
Institutional Procurement
The government has signaled that SHE-Mark products may receive preference in government procurement, corporate social responsibility purchases, and institutional buying programs. This opens up a massive market that was previously inaccessible to small women-led enterprises.
Financial Access
SHE-Mark certification can serve as a credibility signal for banks and financial institutions, potentially making it easier for certified businesses to access working capital loans, equipment financing, and growth capital.
Community and Networking
SHE Marts are not just marketplaces — they are communities. Women entrepreneurs who sell through SHE Marts will connect with each other, share knowledge, collaborate on production and marketing, and build the professional networks that are essential for business growth.
The Marketing Opportunity: Micro-Influencers and Semi-Urban Markets
The timing of SHE-Mark coincides with a significant shift in India's marketing landscape. The Indian influencer market is projected to have reached $400 million by 2025, and a growing share of that market is driven by micro-influencers in semi-urban and rural areas.
This creates an interesting opportunity for SHE-Mark businesses. Women entrepreneurs in semi-urban areas can leverage social media — particularly platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and WhatsApp — to market their SHE-Mark certified products directly to consumers. The authenticity of a woman entrepreneur telling her own story, showing her production process, and connecting with customers personally resonates powerfully with audiences who are tired of polished corporate marketing.
Micro-influencers with 1,000 to 50,000 followers often drive higher engagement rates than celebrity influencers, and their audiences tend to be more locally concentrated and purchasing-ready. For SHE-Mark businesses targeting semi-urban and Tier 2/Tier 3 city consumers, micro-influencer marketing is not just affordable — it is potentially the most effective marketing channel available.
Budget 2026's Broader MSME Context
SHE-Mark and SHE Marts do not exist in isolation. Budget 2026 included several other measures to support MSMEs that will benefit women entrepreneurs.
These include expanded credit guarantee schemes, reduced compliance burdens for small businesses, digital infrastructure investments that will improve e-commerce access in rural and semi-urban areas, and skill development programs focused on digital literacy and business management. Together, these measures create an ecosystem that is more supportive of small business growth than India has seen in years.
The budget also signaled continued support for digital payment infrastructure, which is critical for women entrepreneurs who sell through digital channels. UPI's penetration into semi-urban and rural India means that women-led businesses can accept payments from customers anywhere in the country without the overhead of traditional payment systems.
Success Stories and the Road Ahead
The Lakhpati Didi programme has already produced thousands of success stories — women who have transformed their families' economic circumstances through entrepreneurship. SHE-Mark has the potential to multiply these stories by orders of magnitude.
Consider the self-help group in Odisha that produces organic turmeric powder, or the women's cooperative in Gujarat that makes hand-embroidered textiles, or the group in Kerala that produces traditional snacks using family recipes. These enterprises exist today, producing quality products with limited market reach. SHE-Mark certification and SHE Marts access could transform each of them from local operations into national brands.
The road ahead is not without challenges. Quality control at scale, logistics and supply chain management, digital literacy among participants, and ensuring that the benefits reach women in the most marginalized communities — not just those who are already relatively empowered — will require sustained effort and investment.
But the foundation is strong. India's self-help group network is one of the largest community-based organizational structures in the world, and the government's digital infrastructure — from Aadhaar to UPI to the MSME portal — provides the plumbing for a national SHE-Mark ecosystem.
Resources and Next Steps
If you are a woman entrepreneur or an SHG member interested in SHE-Mark certification, here are your next steps:
- Visit the MSME portal for the latest guidelines and application forms
- Connect with your district-level MSME office for in-person support and guidance
- Reach out to your SHG federation if you are part of a self-help group network
- Start documenting your products and processes — certification will require quality documentation
- Build your digital presence — create social media profiles for your business and start telling your story
Are you a woman entrepreneur ready to take your business to the next level? Contact CoderCops to learn how we can help you build a digital presence, set up e-commerce capabilities, and prepare for SHE-Mark certification. Let us help you turn your enterprise into a brand.
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