The hardest part of being a woman founder is rarely the idea. It is access; to capital, to networks, to the benefit of the doubt. Women continue to receive a small fraction of institutional funding worldwide, a gap that widens further for creative businesses, which investors often dismiss as hobbies, and widens again for founders working out of a city like Lucknow rather than Bangalore or Mumbai. Mrinalini and Nyonika Mitra, co-founders of the multimedia narrative studio Mithrasa, didn't wait to test that thesis in a boardroom. They tested it directly against a global customer base and won.
Their debut tabletop title, One More Page, closed its Kickstarter campaign at $91,960 against a $3,108 goal; roughly 2,900% funded, from 1,267 backers across more than 40 countries, including the US, UK, Germany, Australia and Canada, with collections expected to finish over $100,000 once late pledges close. No pitch deck. No equity given up. No one deciding, on the sisters' behalf, whether a market existed for a hand-drawn card game about a needy pet.
That distinction; validated by customers rather than approved by gatekeepers; is the crux of the business story here and the sisters are explicit that it's inseparable from the gender one.
 "Our journey as unknown first-time creators in a category dominated by American and European studios taught us that the product itself is the only argument that truly matters," says Mrinalini, who was educated in the US and UK on a series of merit scholarships before returning home to Lucknow. "We couldn't rely on networks or industry standing; as women founders, we faced the quiet bias where competence is assumed for some and questioned for others. So, we made the work undeniable instead: every card hand-drawn, every component heirloom-grade, every logistics detail rehearsed. Nearly 1,300 backers across 40+ countries, most of them in the US, UK and Germany, funded us to roughly 2,900% of our goal. Not one of them asked where we were sitting or whether women had made it. That is the opportunity hiding inside the challenge: the customer judges the work. Gatekeepers judge everything else."
Nyonika, who runs operations, logistics and finance, extends the argument from their own campaign to the industry at large and locates the problem with precision. "No, not nearly enough, and the shortage is sharpest exactly where the leverage is," she says of women in gaming and storytelling leadership. "Women are well represented in gaming as artists, writers, community managers, the credited crafts. Women remain underrepresented in key decision-making roles, such as founders and operational leaders overseeing budgets and distribution. In my experience managing a global supply chain, I've encountered very few women in manufacturing and freight negotiations. The issue isn't a lack of talent; women are often welcomed in creative positions but are subtly pushed out of commercial and operational roles."
 Her prescription doubles as a blueprint for other founders reading this as a case study rather than a feel-good profile: "First, we should teach the fundamentals of creative operations, such as unit economics, manufacturing, logistics and licensing; alongside design and storytelling to girls. Ownership resides in these often-overlooked aspects. Second, we should normalize the use of alternative funding sources. Crowdfunding allows women, such as two sisters, to validate a global market without needing permission from traditional gatekeepers and this should be viewed as a primary strategy rather than a secondary option. Finally, and perhaps most simply, let's cover women founders in the same way we cover businesses run by men, focusing on their operations, margins, supply chains, and market shares. When we conduct interviews with women discussing topics like freight rates and fulfillment, it helps normalize their presence in these discussions, encouraging more women to step into these roles."
The division of labour inside Mithrasa is itself a rebuttal to a familiar pattern in family businesses, where women often hold visible "front" roles while decisions happen elsewhere. Here, authority runs end to end: Mrinalini owns design, brand and the fictional world itself; Nyonika owns operations, logistics and finance, the functions that, per her own account, are precisely where women are most often kept out. "The honest advantage of building with your sister is that trust was never a line item," the two say together. "Co-founder conflicts kill more startups than competition; we had two decades of understanding each other under pressure and the freedom to disagree without it feeling like betrayal. Our arguments are fierce, short, and always about the work and the division of authority is absolute... Neither of us overrules the other in her own domain. That clarity, which many co-founders take years and lawyers to reach, we inherited at the kitchen table."
 The origin story underneath the balance sheet is a family one. Mithrasa began during their mother's cancer treatment, born out of a Sunday ritual of board games that held the family together through a difficult year. "It is why our first game is about love interrupting ambition, and why cosiness is a design principle rather than an aesthetic," the sisters say. "And it is why the pledge of 2% of profits to Indian animal sanctuaries is permanently part of our mandate: Bō, the sleepy cow at the heart of One More Page, is drawn from our rescue Labrador. We are building a story universe we intend to last generations and it is probably no accident that a company with that ambition was founded by two people who are, themselves, each other's oldest institution."
For a BW readership, the number worth sitting with isn't the 2,900% funding figure. It's the zero, as in zero equity surrendered, zero investor committees consulted, zero permission sought, on the way to a six-figure outcome in the world's most competitive tabletop markets. |
