Women aspiring to be entrepreneurs couldn’t have asked for more. The Association of Lady Entrepreneurs of Andhra Pradesh (Aleap) plans to set up four green industrial parks across the ‘Sunrise’ State.
“With the support of the Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation (APIIC) and the banking sector, we propose to set up these ‘eco-friendly’ parks at Vijayawada, Nellore, Visakhapatnam and Anantapur, in collaboration with the German government and German capacity building organisation GIZ,” says Rama Devi, Aleap’s founder president.
“Our women members manufacture [many things from] potato chips to electronic chips. We want to bring all of them on a common platform,” explains Ms. Rama Devi.
Each of the four units will be spread over 50 acres distributed in 200 units. Land allocation for the Nellore plant has been made but the Association is waiting for other units to come on stream as it is keen on starting all four units concurrently.
“The new industrial estates proposed to be developed exclusively for women entrepreneurs will be ‘natural parks’ with adequate infrastructure facilities. The idea is to translate the slogan of ‘women empowerment’ into a reality in Navyandhra Pradesh. Most of them will be micro and small units,” says Ms. Rama Devi.
World class infrastructure
The new structures will provide world class infrastructure to women entrepreneurs, common facilities like administrative building, conference hall, a library, information centre, guest room and canteen, free power (15 HP) to each unit, establish 200 enterprises, provide employment to scores of people in the vicinity and will convert unorganised sector into organised sector.
Founded in 1993, Aleap is recognised as one of the premier institutions of women entrepreneurship.
The members provide counselling to aspiring women entrepreneurs through facilitators and Business Development Cell. This enables them to choose business activity of their desire. Need-based skill development training, conduct of entrepreneurship development programmes, helping them to gain access to finance from banks and financial institutions and providing them the much-needed infrastructure to start commercial operations and post-establishment assistance in the fields of marketing and production are its other roles.
“Aleap is a one-stop destination for aspiring entrepreneurs as we take care of all their needs till we make sure that the entrepreneur is capable of operating a unit independently,” says Ms. Rama Devi.
