Ornamental fisheries is an emerging business which has vast opportunity for growth. Government of India has identified ornamental fish sector as one of the thrust area as a small-scale fishery activity for generating employment opportunities and augmenting foreign exchange earnings. Marine Products Export Development Agency (MPEDA) introduced the Rainbow Revolution Scheme in the year 2007 with the mandate to encourage breeding and export of ornamental fish and there are about 300 beneficiaries of this scheme in Maharashtra. This paper addresses the objective if ornamental fisheries have created equitable entrepreneurship and employment opportunities for both men and women. Out of 110 ornamental fish entrepreneurs in Maharashtra, 82 units are owned by men and 28 by women and most graduates from middle age group with 5-10 years' experience in this business. Most have established the production units with their own funds for self-employment. A total of 60% of entrepreneurs reported that they earn between Rs. 10,000 to 30,000 / month. All have undergone trainings in ornamental fisheries. One unit of ornamental fisheries creates 2-3 numbers of jobs for cleaning, feeding and marketing. The involvement of women was higher in activities like feeding (53.40%), cleaning of tanks and siphoning (49.51%), feed preparation (51.46%), setting of fish for breeding (53.33%), removal of offspring and marketing (47.57%) as compare to men. It is a family managed enterprise, the women and children do the routine activities like cleaning, feeding and management of production units. It was found that men spent 7.75 hours/day towards management of ornamental fish production units whereas women involvement was reported to be 4.00 hours/day. It is encouraging that 25% of entrepreneurs are women and are managing the business on their own. Even when the numbers of men entrepreneurs are high, participation of women in the business is significant as they are involved in activities like feeding, cleaning and marketing of ornamental fish production. The study suggests that the role of women in ornamental fish production can be enhanced through targeted schemes for women with a focus on increasing ownership and training programmes. This will make the business more equitable and sustainable. There is further scope to increase women entrepreneurs for which cluster approach is suggested. It can be concluded that these are start-ups where men and women both have benefitted from the Government schemes. Amongst all sub sectors of fisheries, ornamental fish culture has emerged as an equitable entrepreneurship and employment provider.