Telangana government’s WE Hub will play a major role in implementing WING, the flagship programme for women entrepreneurs under the Centre’s Startup India.
The State-led incubator, for women entrepreneurs, has joined hands with Startup India and will identify and provide aspiring women entrepreneurs access to incubation, investors and business support under the programme. The Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM) is also involved with the programme.
On Friday, Telangana Industries and IT Minister K.T. Rama Rao launched the WING programme in the State, at a function in WE Hub in which Industries and IT Secretary Jayesh Ranjan participated.
WING is a unique capacity development programme that aims to support 7,500 women entrepreneurs in the country per year. It is being spearheaded by Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) through the Startup India programme.
Besides facilitating the process of becoming an entrepreneur for at least 500 women from Telangana, WE Hub will also lead the task of scouting outstanding women-led startups in the State for the National Start-up Award 2020.
Speaking on the occasion, the Minister highlighted the work to encourage women entrepreneurship, especially the support it offered to innovation, undertaken by WE Hub in the one-and-a-half-years of its operations. The incubator has also forged some international collaborations.
Urging WE Hub team, led by CEO Deepthi Ravula, to expand its activities and help more women aspiring to be entrepreneurs, Mr.Rao listed the various support mechanism made available to promote women entrepreneurship under the State government’s TS-iPASS industrial policy measure.
Mr. Ranjan said WE Hub is helping 128 women entrepreneurs by creating multiple collaborations across socio-economic communities. DPIIT’s partnership with WE Hub will help women entrepreneurs in Telangana to follow their ambitions and build successful companies.
Such initiatives, according to Ms.Ravula, will contribute to more women becoming entrepreneurs. At present, women constitute only 14% of the total number of entrepreneurs in the country. Under the partnership, WE Hub will target to conduct 10 workshops to promote women entrepreneurship.
