NITI Aayog launches Women Entrepreneurship Platform

The National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog has launched Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP) on the occasion of International Women’s day (March 8, 2018). WEP’s theme song ‘ Naari Shakti’ composed and sung by renowned singer Kailash Kher was also released.

Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP)

Objective

• Build vibrant ecosystem for women across country to help realise their entrepreneurial aspirations, scale-up innovative initiatives and chalk-out sustainable, long-term strategies for their businesses.
• Power vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem through an enabling network of industry collaborations, partnerships, mentors and peer-to-peer connect.
• Address bottlenecks faced by both aspiring and established women entrepreneurs by streamlining information across government and private sector schemes and initiatives with informative, interactive website as a dedicated resource and knowledge base.

Key Features
WEP aspires to substantially increase number of women entrepreneurs to create and empower dynamic new India by opening up avenues of growth and opportunity for women entrepreneurs. These aspirations of women entrepreneurs are manifested in three pillars on which WEP is built:

• Ichha Shakti: Motivating aspiring entrepreneurs to start their enterprise.
• Gyaan Shakti: Providing knowledge and ecosystem support to women entrepreneurs to help them foster entrepreneurship.
• Karma Shakti: Providing hands-on support to entrepreneurs in setting-up and scaling up businesses.

The WEP platform will operate within broader framework of industry collaborations and partnerships, which cut across sectors in economy. It will provide unique services such as credit evaluation of women-led startups by CRISIL and potential equity investments through an Rs. 10 crore fund established by DICE Districts
 Partners of WEP
ShopClues.com will provide internship and dedicated mentorship and Mann Deshi Foundation to provide digital and financial literacy to aspiring women entrepreneurs. Moreover, several other leading corporates and industry bodies such as NASSCOM, CII, FICCI, SIDBI and Facebook will provide business acceleration, mentorship and other start-up support for women entrepreneurs.

Month: Current Affairs - March, 2018