Abstract
Women entrepreneurs have been facing various challenges in the sustenance of their enterprises. During the COVID-19 lockdown in India, their vulnerability doubled due to the financial distress. In the backdrop of this, the paper measures the direct and indirect impact via forward and backward linkages of women entrepreneurs during the COVID-19 lockdown. Further, it examines their sustainability and the challenges they faced during the lockdown. The paper is based on primary data using a pre-structured questionnaire from 50 women entrepreneurs in Rishikesh, Uttarakhand. Analyses have been performed using principal components analysis, Kruskal–Wallis H test, Mann–Whitney U test and Chi-square test. The paper exhibits that both the direct and indirect impacts via forward and backward linkages have been more significant on women entrepreneurs. However, women entrepreneurs tried to sustain their business by switching towards online conduct of business, changing their promotional strategy and doing work from home. A major challenge faced by them is the lack of finance, and they relied on their previous savings to finance the expenditure.
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