Implications of Driving Factors for Entrepreneurship: A Case Study for Immigrants, Ethnic, and Religious Minorities’ Entrepreneurship in Pune City

The city of Pune has witnessed the emergence of business initiatives from minority communities like Muslims, Sikh, Sindhis, Marwardis, Jains, and others who continue to display high rates of entrepreneurship. This chapter attempts to examine the driving factors influencing ethnic and religious entrepreneurship. Through empirical study the researchers intended to find out whether ethnic minority entrepreneurship depends on the socioeconomic and ethno-socio characteristics of the immigrant people. Ethnic minority’s decision to enter entrepreneurship is generally influenced by different factors such as historical factors, market conditions, clusters, geographical factors, strong cultural factors etc. They choose entrepreneurship because of their cultural predictions toward self-employment in favor of working for someone else. The residential clustering of members of the same ethnic community in a neighborhood, known as an ethnic enclave, contributes to the creation of entrepreneurial opportunities. Ethnic enclaves create niche market opportunities for serving the local ethnic population motivating entrepreneur’s to enter into new businesses. Main objective of this research is to study the various driving factors for entrepreneurship among the ethnic and religious minorities and to analyze whether ethnic minority entrepreneurship depends on the socioeconomic and ethno-socio characteristics of the immigrant people. An exploratory research design was adopted and data was collected from Pune region majorly from communities like Muslims, Sikh, Sindhis, Marwaris, Boharis etc. Random sampling method was used to select database. Responses were collected from 183 entrepreneurs.