Tag: Women Entrepreneurship

Categories
Startup

Startups in India Need To Be Encouraged To Ensure That They Are Not Afraid of Failure: Piyush Goyal

startup ipo india

New Delhi, March 3: Piyush Goyal, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal on Tuesday said that startups need to be encouraged to experiment and ensure that they are not afraid of failure. In his address at the CII’s Global Bio India Startup Conclave, Goyal said that in some sense, failure also has its importance, particularly in research, innovation and invention. The Minister emphasised that Indian startups need to be encouraged to experiment and only then they will be able to prove their capacity to go beyond in the long run.

“Our startups need to be encouraged to experiment, to go beyond the run of the mill thinking. We need to ensure that our startups are not afraid of failure. I believe that the country should celebrate failure because it is only when somebody fails, he knows how not to do something,” he said.

Emphasising on the talent in rural India, the minister said that the need of the hour is to engage more with rural India as there is a lot of talent lying there. “You cannot have great innovation and invention coming up through just government initiative, we need to have all sections of business involved. The government should act as an enabler, a service provider,” the minister added.

In India, the government is taking steps to promote startups by launching a slew of initiatives to boost the startup ecosystem in the country. It had launched the Startup India initiative in January 2016 to build a strong ecosystem for nurturing innovation and entrepreneurship.

Categories
Startup

Women Entrepreneurship To Get Major Boost As Telangana’s WE Hub and Gujarat’s I-Hub Join Hands To Support Startups in Raising Capital

Women Entrepreneurs in India (Photo Credits: Pixabay)

Hyderabad, January 18: In a bid to give a major boost to women entrepreneurship, Telangana’s WE Hub and Gujarat’s i-Hub have collaborated to help female entrepreneurs. The pact aims to encourage and support startups in raising capital. WE Hub is a State-run platform for Women Entrepreneurs in Telangana while i-Hub is an incubation set up of the Gujarat Government. As part of the MoU, as many as 240 women entrepreneurs will be selected for the pre-incubation program and a total of 20 will be shortlisted for the co-incubation program.

Here’s how the women entrepreneurs would benefit from the Collaboration:

  1. The partnership will initiate pre-incubation program for 240 aspiring women entrepreneurs in the EdTech, MedTech and Fintech sectors in the states of Telangana and Gujarat.
  2. Post three months of pre-incubation program and after rigorous interventions a total of 20 entrepreneurs will be selected for the final virtual/physical co-incubation program.
  3. This co-incubation brings in the startups the opportunity to scale up to viable enterprises and receive solid scale-up rapid growth mentorship from the leaders at i-Hub and WE Hub.
  4. The startups will also have Government supported exposure visits across Telangana and Gujarat, the pact read.

On Saturday, an MoU was signed by Jayesh Ranjan, Telangana Principal Secretary, IT and Industries and Anju Sharma, Principal Secretary Higher and Technical Education, Gujarat.

Categories
Technology

Flipkart and Niti Aayog Collaborate To Enhance Women Entrepreneurship Platform To Help Women Entrepreneurs in India; All You Need To Know About the WEP

Women entrepreneurs in India (Photo Credits: Unsplash)

New Delhi, January 12: With an aim to enhance community experience for women entrepreneurs in India, e-commerce marketplace Flipkart and NITI Aayog have joined hands to launch the revamped Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP). The WEP is a unified access portal which brings together women from parts of India to realise their entrepreneurial aspirations. Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Chief Executive Officer of the Flipkart Group, said MSMEs and start-ups have enabled the industry to better understand their challenges and needs.

The vision of the two partners- Flipkart and NITI Aayog is to make ‘Community’ a very interactive, rewarding and intuitive question and answer platform leveraging WEP resources. Through this, the entrepreneurs can utilise it for fruitful discussions and for sharing knowledge, ultimately benefiting the women entrepreneurs’ ecosystem in India.

Women entrepreneurs face unique obstacles, right from a lack of networking opportunities and mentors to the challenge of balancing work and family. When women come together or form communities, they are better equipped to tackle challenges that come their way, and shared experiences from mentors and professionals can further help them to take their passion and entrepreneurial ambition to new heights.

The idea of the platform was first mooted by NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant who announced the setting-up of a Women Entrepreneurship Platform at 8th Global Entrepreneurship Summit held in Hyderabad during 2017, with an overarching theme of ‘Women First, Prosperity for All.’

Here’s all you need to know about Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP):

  1. The Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP) is a first of its kind, unified access portal.
  2. It aims to bring together women from different parts of India to realize their entrepreneurial aspirations.
  3. The revamped version will also include an additional feature to offer mentorship to the women mentees with specific knowledge concerning a problem area through a dedicated online mechanism facilitated under FICCI-FLO’s empowering the Greater 50% mission, it added.
  4. The ‘Community’ on the WEP platform aims to connect women entrepreneurs seeking clarifications on aspects of setting up new businesses with those who have experience in setting up businesses and hence can contribute by solving queries.
  5. These include queries like registering businesses, GST, funding, effects of the pandemic, progressing already established businesses.

Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant hopes that the WEP will become a digital place for entrepreneurs to not only seek information and support, but also help each other out. He said the WEP will serve as a forum for people’s voices to be heard – helping inform policies and programs to better suit the needs and requirements of people.

Meanwhile, Krishnamurthy said as a homegrown company, the constant and intense engagement with local Indian businesses, MSMEs and start-ups has enabled us to better understand their challenges and needs, adding that the WEP plays a critical role in uplifting and empowering women-led businesses in their growth ambition.

Categories
Startup

Women Entrepreneurship Cell Launched by Maharashtra Govt to Boost Female Engagement in Startups

Women Entrepreneurs in India (Photo Credits: Pixabay)

In a bid to give a major boost to women entrepreneurship in Maharashtra, the state government has announced of establishing of a woman entrepreneurship cell. The special cell that has been launched will work towards enhancing, guiding and training the female entrepreneurs in startups and different entrepreneurship-related sectors. The news was announced by Maharashtra Employment and Entrepreneurship Minister Nawab Malik. The cell is established to improve the innovation-driven entrepreneurship ecosystem in Maharashtra.

The Minister said that there will now be a “Girl-Student Entrepreneurship Club” at schools and universities levels. In these clubs, appropriate coaching will be given to college students who aspire to be budding entrepreneurs in their career. Further, it’ll additionally create incubators for women entrepreneurs and will help them in organising accelerated packages. The Minister further added that the monetary help might be supplied to start-ups established by these women entrepreneurs.

In December, the state government of Maharashtra decided to provide financial assistance to innovative startups which wish to file for patents. Malik had said that in the first phase of the scheme, 125 to 150 startups will be supported with financial assistance of Rs 2 lakh to Rs 10 lakh. He said in order to survive in a competitive world, it is important for startups and early-stage entrepreneurs to protect their Intellectual Property Rights (IPR).

 

Categories
Startup

Google India Partners with Sheroes to Support 500 Rural Women Entrepreneurs in India; All You Need to Know About the Programme

Rural women entrepreneurs

New Delhi, December 22: In a bid to support rural women entrepreneurs in India, Google India on Monday said it has partnered with Sheroes to support 500 women entrepreneurs by connecting them with experts and enabling access to resources, guidance and mentorship. In 2019, Google had started a small pilot for an accelerator programme for 10 women entrepreneurs in rural India across its Internet Saathi network. The programme by the tech giant is centered on solving for basic business issues like customer acquisition, selling and marketing, digital presence, management and self-confidence.

Google has now joined hands with Sheroes to scale this to 500 rural women entrepreneurs. Under the initiative, the tech giant would connect them with experts, urban women entrepreneurs in the same or adjacent industries and enabling access to the right resources, guidance and mentorship over a six-month period. Kerala-Based Startup Inks Pact With UN Women’s Empowerment Principles to Train, Promote and Empower Women.

In a statement, Google India said within three months, there was a rise in confidence among the participants and the women went back and applied the learning to their businesses. It stated that 80 percent of them started working on their digital presence and one of the participants had a working website within months. In a separate statement, Google said it has launched new insight tools for the travel industry.

In 2015, the Internet Saathi programme was initiated in collaboration with Tata Trusts to bring basic digital literacy skills to women in Indian villages and have them become informal teachers for other women in their communities. Since then, the programme has touched over 30 million women across the country.

Categories
Startup

Startups to Become Backbone of India as it Promotes Young Entrepreneurs With New Ideas of Doing Business, Says Piyush Goyal

Startup
Startup (Photo Credits: Pixabay)

New Delhi, December 13: The future of India is going to be startups as its ecosystem is encouraging innovation, promoting and strengthening new young entrepreneurs, Union Minister Piyush Goyal said on Saturday. While addressing the 93rd Annual Convention of Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), Goyal said that startups are going to be the backbone of the country as they come up with new ideas and new ways of doing business.

The Union Minister further stated that the government has identified another 24 sectors on which work is going on by industry leaders who are working together to come up with actionable agenda to add nearly Rs 200 lakh crores worth of manufacturing in India in the next 10 years. “I have no doubt in my mind that that FICCI will be a part of our journey of a new India, of transforming India and building a more powerful India,” said Goyal.

Goyal appreciated the growing digital environment as said as we go forward in the post-COVID world, the country will see a mix of virtual and physical engagements, combining to help us expand our global outreach, helping us reach out to new markets, customers and products. During his address, Goyal also said that under the Brand India initiative, consumers both in India and internationally will be educated about products which are made in India.

“We are pushing all industry to certify the Make in India products. Under the Brand India initiative, we are also looking at branding India. It’s time now that India demonstrates to the world our leadership position and commitment of quality,” said Goyal.

Categories
Startup

Women Entrepreneurship in India: Wadhwani Foundation Emphasises on Adopting Ways to Tap the Untapped Potential of New Women-Led Businesses in the Country

Bengaluru, November 20: Lauding the importance of a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem and the women entrepreneurs in India, Wadhwani Foundation said that by adopting several new measures will tap into the enormous untapped potential of new woman-led businesses. The Wadhwani Foundation is a global not-for-profit championing the development of entrepreneurial ecosystem across the country. According to reports, only a quarter of India’s workforce is female as against a global average of 49 percent, and it is clear that India’s growing entrepreneurial landscape has left behind a key demographic- the women.

Ajay Kela, President and CEO, Wadhwani Foundation said that of the 63 million MSMEs in India, only six percent are women-led, a criminal waste of talent. The Foundation believes that it is the need of the hour to unlock the untapped potential of women entrepreneurs by providing them with a support system comprising of an integrated policy framework with equal focus on rural India, women entrepreneurship programs and skill requirements of women, more gender-responsive financial sector and a conscious integration of the formal and informal networks.

According to a report by IANS, growth driving, business-friendly skills such as relationship building, emotional intelligence, and multitasking are second nature to women. The report said that there is a huge opportunity to empower women in India to choose entrepreneurship by creating networks that promote an ecosystem to motivate and support women entrepreneurs in taking the leap of faith by providing training in the nuances of entrepreneurship.

With women comprising just 14 per cent of the total entrepreneurial base in India, this is India’s big chance to tap into the precious resource of women entrepreneurs so as to realize their true potential. The report said that it is equally important to celebrate the fearless breed of women entrepreneurs who have made it big as role models for inspiring women towards entrepreneurship and facilitating a major mindset shift.