Technologies for MSMEs: NITI Aayog, the government’s public policy think tank, announced Tuesday the launch of the Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP) 3.0 web portal to support women entrepreneurs in India. The platform will target onboarding 2.5 million female entrepreneurs, engage with 500 partners, and host over 200 capacity-building online and offline events. Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME) – a non-profit organization for entrepreneurship in India, will act as program manager of the platform for the next three years to manage the platform end-to-end, as well as develop, operate and maintain the portal. increase.
WEP was conceived in 2017 to boost the ecosystem of women entrepreneurs in India by bringing together key stakeholders and resolving the information asymmetry that exists in the ecosystem. As an aggregator platform, WEP serves her six main areas: Community & Networking, Fundraising & Financial Assistance, Incubation & Promotion, Compliance & Tax Assistance, Entrepreneurial Skills & Mentorship, and Marketing Assistance. .
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“Women entrepreneurs make up only 13.76% of all entrepreneurs in India and only 8.05 million out of 58.5 million entrepreneurs. We aim to help address fragmentation,” said WEP Senior Advisor Niti Aayog and Mission Director Anna Roy in a statement.
“To achieve this, we need to hear from our stakeholders on what they can do to improve the platform. Together we want to chart the course forward for the platform,” she said. Said. Currently, WEP has several partner entities such as United Nations, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Human X, Microsave, Mastercard, SIDBI, TechMahindra, CISCO, Atal Innovation Mission and Flipkart.
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According to NITI Aayog’s previous statement, as of March 20, 2022, over 900 women entrepreneurs have benefited through 77 programs and events held on the WEP platform.
In November, NITI Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission, which aims to foster innovation and entrepreneurship in the country, announced the launch of a women-focused challenge in Phase II of the second edition of the Atal New India Challenge (ANIC). Announced. The challenge aimed to support technology-based innovations that solve sectoral challenges of national importance and social relevance through grants of up to INR 10 crore.
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