Countries with low financial independence for women have lower divorce rates, not for happy marriages: Kunal Shah

CRED founder Kunal Shah said that in India, female participation in labour is extremely low. In an interview with Forbes India, he shared an eye-opening lesson he learned while visiting China after his FreeCharge exit.

“In every product meeting, there were more women than men,” he remarked.

This intrigued him to look into India’s workforce stats, and he found that female participation in the labour force was painfully low.

“It’s simple: one-gender households can’t drive per capita income growth,” Shah said. 

In India females have lower financial independence, says Kunal Shah

According to the CRED boss, this is more than just economics, as it affects social dynamics, too. 

“Countries with low financial independence for women often have lower divorce rates, not always a sign of happy marriages,” Shah remarked.

The entrepreneur opined that India will not be prosperous with one gender contributing alone.

“That’s my single-line answer to all the things that we are going to talk about,” Shah said. “It creates a very high concentration of financial services. As the core thing was, this is a male gender-driven household, so ARPU (average revenue per user) consumption is low on other things except financial services.”

The angel investor also added that time value for money is an interesting concept that doesn’t exist for most Indians. 

“I just love connecting the dots,” he admitted. “All my businesses are just manifestations of thoughts and observations over time.”

From a BPO company to marketing solutions and eventually FreeCharge (which he sold for a cool $400 million), each venture brought him lessons.

Also read: 'Our artisans lose. Sad!': Harsh Goenka slams Prada for selling Kolhapuri chappals at over ₹1 lakh (startuppedia.in)