My name is Sushila. I am 48, and I have spent the last two decades filling a gap no policy paper mentions — the space between a government scheme and the child it was meant to reach. In Bawana's Lal Flats, that gap looked like babies with no safe place to be minded while their mothers earned a day's wage, and children who had never seen a classroom because no one had noticed they were missing. Over 11 years, that gap-filling work reached nearly 100,000 children and 22,000 women — not through any grand design, but through one woman refusing to look away. This is the story of India with over 145 million children who will need nurturing care by 2047 for a Viksit Bharat. What we lack is more Sushilas.
For decades, that has been the story of childcare in India: Treated as a private household responsibility rather than the economic force it actually is. As India charts its path to Viksit Bharat 2047, it is time to correct that account. Women remain three times more likely than men to carry unpaid care work, a burden that keeps them out of paid employment before their careers even begin. Yet within that burden sits real economic upside: childcare alone represents an estimated $13.7 billion market opportunity in India, and the wider care economy could generate up to 11 million new jobs by 2030, nearly 70% of them for women.
Capturing that opportunity requires more than goodwill; it requires enterprises. This is the case for CAREpreneurs: Women who build and run the creches, daycare centres and home-based childcare services that let other women work. India is not the first country to face this transition, and it does not have to guess how it ends. Japan offers a useful comparison. When it introduced its Long-Term Care Insurance system in 2000, eldercare was still largely unpaid family labour, much like childcare in India today. Two decades on, that sector employs 2.1 million workers and accounts for roughly 1.8% of GDP in care benefits alone, while Japan's broader health and social-work industry's share of nominal GDP has climbed from under 4% in the mid-1990s to over 8% today. That growth was not automatic. It came from treating care as an investable, regulated sector rather than a private burden exactly the shift India's care economy needs to make now.
It also came from a specific combination: Government setting the framework, and committed on-the-ground institutions delivering within it. Japan's insurance mandate created demand and financing; a mixed market of public, non-profit and private providers built the supply. Real scale only appeared once both were in place. India's own experiment with that combination is already under way. At NITI Aayog's Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP), eight years of work, since its 2018 incubation, have shown that women's economic participation depends on ecosystems, not isolated schemes. Through the Award to Reward model, WEP has already supported over 1,000 women entrepreneurs across 20 programmes with 16-plus ecosystem partners and 730-plus hours of tailored capacity-building entrepreneurs.
{{/usCountry}}It also came from a specific combination: Government setting the framework, and committed on-the-ground institutions delivering within it. Japan's insurance mandate created demand and financing; a mixed market of public, non-profit and private providers built the supply. Real scale only appeared once both were in place. India's own experiment with that combination is already under way. At NITI Aayog's Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP), eight years of work, since its 2018 incubation, have shown that women's economic participation depends on ecosystems, not isolated schemes. Through the Award to Reward model, WEP has already supported over 1,000 women entrepreneurs across 20 programmes with 16-plus ecosystem partners and 730-plus hours of tailored capacity-building entrepreneurs.
{{/usCountry}}WEP brings convergence, financing pathways and an anchor-implementing-enabling partnership structure; organisations like Mobile Creches bring 57 years of frontline experience training caregivers and setting quality standards. Neither, alone, builds a sector. Together, government convening and grassroots institutional depth are what turn CAREpreneur from a pilot into infrastructure.
The harder question is what it will take for a caregiver in India to carry the same professional standing as a doctor, a nurse or a school teacher. Japan answers that question through law, not sentiment. Hoikushi, its licensed childcare-worker qualification, is granted only after a national exam covering nine subjects and a practical assessment; centres must employ licensed hoikushi at fixed staff-to-child ratios to even qualify for public funding.
Kaigofukushishi, its certified eldercare worker qualification, carries its own dedicated immigration visa category — the same legal recognition typically reserved for doctors and nurses. Caregiving in Japan is not informally trusted work; it is statutorily defined, examined and licensed. India's caregivers deserve the same architecture: A national certification and registry, a defined scope of practice, staffing ratios tied to funding and licensing, and a career ladder that lets a trained caregiver be recognised, and paid, as the skilled professional she is. CAREpreneur's workforce curriculum, on quality, safety and business capability, builds toward this. But capacity building is a stepping stone; statutory recognition is the destination
India does not have to choose between investing in growth and investing in its CAREpreneurs. Every enterprise strengthened, every caregiver certified, is a step toward the workforce and productivity that Viksit Bharat 2047 will be built on, and a step toward giving India's caregivers the recognition Japan took two decades to legislate. Our task now is to back these enterprises, connect them to capital and expertise, and build deliberately and together the professional status caregiving has always deserved.
(The views expressed are personal)
This article is authored by Anna Roy, programme director, NITI Aayog; and Sumitra Mishra, CEO, Mobile Creches.