The IMC Ladies' Wing is hosting its 39th Women Entrepreneurs' Exhibition in Mumbai on August 25 and 26, 2026, bringing together more than 300 women entrepreneurs from across India in one of the country's longest-running platforms dedicated to showcasing women-led businesses.
The exhibition's 39-year run makes it one of the more durable institutional platforms for women's entrepreneurship in India, having operated continuously across multiple economic cycles, policy regimes and shifts in how Indian society more broadly has approached women's participation in commerce and business ownership.
Now in its 39th edition, the exhibition has become a fixture on India's entrepreneurship calendar, offering women business owners -- ranging from early-stage founders to established enterprise operators -- a venue to display products, connect with potential customers and buyers, and network with peers across sectors including fashion, food, wellness, home goods and services. The event's longevity reflects the IMC Ladies' Wing's sustained role in supporting women's economic participation in Mumbai and beyond.
The Indian Merchants' Chamber, under whose umbrella the Ladies' Wing operates, has historically served as one of the country's more influential regional industry bodies, and the sustained institutional backing behind the exhibition has helped it maintain continuity and credibility even as newer, venture-capital-oriented platforms for women's entrepreneurship have emerged over the past decade.
The exhibition arrives amid a broader push across India to expand formal support structures for women entrepreneurs, from dedicated venture funds and accelerator programmes to government schemes aimed at improving women's access to credit and business infrastructure. While large-scale venture funding continues to flow disproportionately toward male-founded startups, platforms like the IMC exhibition play an important role at the grassroots and small-business level, where the majority of India's women entrepreneurs actually operate.
Data on India's entrepreneurial landscape has consistently shown that women-led businesses remain concentrated in smaller-scale, often informal or semi-formal enterprises rather than venture-backed startups, making exhibition and market-access platforms -- which help such businesses find customers and buyers directly -- arguably more consequential for the median woman entrepreneur than the venture funding conversations that dominate startup media coverage.
For the participating entrepreneurs, the two-day event offers not only direct sales opportunities but also visibility and market feedback that can be difficult to access through digital channels alone. As India's policy conversation around women's entrepreneurship increasingly centres on high-profile venture-backed founders, exhibitions of this scale serve as a reminder of the much larger base of women-led small and medium enterprises that continue to drive local economies across the country.
Organisers and participants alike have noted that in-person exhibition formats continue to offer distinct advantages over purely digital sales channels for many small business owners, including the ability to build direct customer relationships, receive immediate product feedback, and access buyer networks that remain difficult to replicate through online marketplaces alone.
