WE Hub, India’s first and only state-led incubator to foster and promote women entrepreneurship to start up, scale up and accelerate with global market access, announced ‘UPSurge’, a collaboration with the Australian government.
UPSurge is a pre-incubation programme to aid women entrepreneurs from across India to achieve financial independence. It follows the first WE Hub/Australia collaboration ‘Community Slate’ which concluded in 2020. Australia was WE-Hub’s first international partner.
The programme was launched by Barry O’Farrell AO, Australian High Commissioner to India; Sarah Kirlew, Australian Consul General to South India, and Deepthi Ravula, CEO of WE Hub, in the presence of Municipal Administration and IT Minister K.T. Rama Rao and IT Principal Secretary Jayesh Ranjan.
The 12-week pre-incubation programme gives participants skills to help them systematically gauge the feasibility of their ideas and develop them into a sustainable business, by instilling entrepreneurship to the participants. The conclusion of this programme will be a pitch day, followed by graduation.
Through the partnership, entrepreneurs can minimise financial risks, get assistance in the selling of pilot products and risk mitigation. The programme has already received 549 applications from across 14 cities around the country.
“Three years ago, on the same platform, we have taken that first step in the country to establish a dedicated incubator to foster women entrepreneurship. Today, I am proud to say that WE Hub has emerged as the role model in India to enable women entrepreneurs and has increased participation of women in the workforce. Hoping this partnership with the Australian High Commission goes a long way and benefits women and girls in STEM,” said Mr. Rama Rao.
Mr. O’Farrell said, “Encouraging women and girls to STEM, and providing an environment for them to thrive and progress, is an objective of the Australian Government under our Academy of Science’s ‘Women in STEM Decadal Plan’.”
Mr Ranjan said WE Hub has been working extensively in terms of enabling market access, credit facilitation to women entrepreneurs, research and advocacy on the policy front for women entrepreneurship in the country.
For his part, Mr Ravula said WE Hub looks forward to enabling more women through the ‘UPSurge’ pre-incubation programme where they will be supporting close to 240 aspiring women entrepreneurs.
Published - March 10, 2021 11:31 pm IST
