TS, Guj join hands to boost women entrepreneurship

Hyderabad: In a first-of-its-kind, two State governments have joined hands to supercharge the growth of women-led start-ups in focus sectors. A total of 240 women entrepreneurs will be selected for pre-incubation programme and 20 will be shortlisted for the coincubation programme.

A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was inked between Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary, Industries & Commerce (I&C) and Information Technology Department, Government of Telangana and Anju Sharma, Principal Secretary of Higher & Technical Education, Government of Gujarat at a virtual event on Saturday.

IT Minister K T Rama Rao, Gujarat's Education Ministers Bhupendrasinh Chudasama, Vibhavariben Dave and WE Hub CEO Deepthi Ravula were among those who witnessed the event.

WE Hub is India's first State-led incubator to foster and promote women entrepreneurship to start up, scale up and accelerate global market access. It encourages and support start-ups in raising capital.

The partnership will initiate a pre-incubation programme for 240 aspiring women entrepreneurs in the EdTech, MedTech and Fintech sectors in the States of Telangana and Gujarat. Post three months of pre-incubation programme and after rigorous interventions, a total of 20 entrepreneurs will be selected for the final virtual/physical coincubation programme.

This coincubation brings the start-ups the opportunity to scale up to viable enterprises and receive rapid growth mentorship from the leaders at i-Hub and WE Hub. The start-ups will also have government-supported exposure visits across Telangana and Gujarat.

"When we announced the formation of WE Hub in November 2017, little did people understand the vision of this initiative and the impact it would create. In the last two years, WE Hub has pushed the narrative of democratising entrepreneurship by breaking the barriers that exist for women entrepreneurs through its work.

We are happy that WE Hub has now become the best practice model for many States governments in India. Through this partnership, we would like to create a roadmap of how women entrepreneurship can be scaled, supported and sustained not just in India but across the world.

I wish this collaboration the best and pledge our support for an Atmanirbhar Bharat where entrepreneurship is based on competence and not gender," said IT Minister KTR.

"We are glad to collaborate with iHub to promote women entrepreneurship across Telangana and Gujarat. Through this collaboration, we are going to equip iHub with the learnings, knowledge and ecosystem we have developed in the past three years working with over 3,400 women entrepreneurs, 11 start-up programmes, incubating 148 start-ups and creating over 300 jobs," said Deepthi Ravula.

"When iHub connected with us, we were thrilled to collaborate on Incubation, knowledge sharing, curriculum development, programme creation for aspiring and existing entrepreneurs. To yield the desired benefits of making India the women entrepreneurship capital of the world, ecosystems must collaborate and this is the first step towards making the vision a reality," she added.

The commencement of the programmes is scheduled for the first week of February 2021.