NITI Aayog, the policy institute of the Government of India launched the Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP) yesterday, to mark the International Women’s Day.
This project aims at building a sustainable environment for women across India to realize their entrepreneurial objectives, substantially increase state-of-the-art initiatives and initiate long-term and sustainable business strategies for their companies. The vision of this plan is to involve more women in the economical dynamics of this country and empower them with the necessary tools and knowledge to contribute to the development of a modern India.
“The platform aspires to substantially increase the number of women entrepreneurs who will create and empower a dynamic new India,” said Anna Roy, head of Nasscom’s WEP.
CEO of NITI Aayog, Amitabh Kant, launched the WEP platform at NITI Aayog’s locals in New Delhi, on Thursday with the attendance of UN Resident Coordinator in India Yuri Afanasiev, singer Kailash Kher, industry leaders and supporting partners.
“Naari Shakti” a WEP theme song composed and sung by Shri Kailash Kher was released to mark the occasion.
The event also programmed the Nominations for the Women Transforming India Awards, 2018 by Amitabh Kant and Yuri Afanasiev.
CEO of NITI Aayog first depictured the WEP initiative at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) last year in Hyderabad. The program wishes to empower women with a motivating entrepreneurial environment by enabling collaborations between the different industries, partnerships, mentoring and peer-to-peer connections.
Set up under the leadership of Anna Roy, Adviser (Industry) of NITI Aayog, the platform ambitions to see a huge improvement in the number of women entrepreneurs. These aspirations can be clearly seen in the three pillars on which WEP is built:
- Ichha Shakti – Motivating would-be entrepreneurs to start their own business.
- Gyaan Shakti – Providing knowledge and ecosystem support to women entrepreneurs and helping them foster their entrepreneurial spirit.
- Karma Shakti – Aims at providing financial support to entrepreneurs starting and scaling up their businesses.
The platform also provides an informative and interactive website to provide resource and knowledge to the women wishing to begin their startups. WEP’s intentions are to tackle and reduce the hurdles faced by both would-be and established women entrepreneurs by providing information across government and private sector schemes and initiatives.
Dice Districts have provided an INR 10 Crore fund to the platform to offer credit evaluation to women-led startups and equity investments in an additional effort to open up real opportunities for the growth of the women startups.
NITI Aayog also partnered with ShopClues.com who agreed to offer internships and mentorship to the aspiring entrepreneurs. Mann Deshi Foundation, an additional partner of the initiative will provide a helpline number for advice in digital literacy.
Additional leading corporates such as Nasscom, CII, Ficci, Sidbi, and Facebook have associated with WEP to provide business acceleration, mentorship, and support to women entrepreneurs.
If you want to visit the Women Entrepreneurship Platform, Click Here.