IIT-B to groom 30 women entrepreneurs for start-ups

A COHORT of 30 women entrepreneurs will be groomed by the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, as well as Women Entrepreneurship and Empowerment under a new programme launched on Monday.

The Society for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (SINE) at IIT-B has joined hands with WEE to launch a ‘Women Entrepreneurship and Empowerment Mentorship Program’, with support from Department of Science and Technology and NITI Aayog. With this programme, the institute aims to improve the visibility of women in the start-up ecosystem, where numbers are skewed in favour of men. At IIT-B alone, only 10 per cent of the students who have founded start-ups are women.

Poyni Bhatt, CEO of SINE, said: “It is a well-documented fact that the proportion of women entrepreneurs is really low, although there is no specific database to prove that. To address this, we have started the programmes, through which we will groom women who have ideas for start-ups.”

“In August, we gave a nationwide call for applications. We have women from technology sectors, media as well as the social sector,” said Bhatt. They will be trained between October 7 and December 30. At the end, the best business ideas will be chosen by a jury and given a prize money of Rs 25 lakh.
News Source (Indian Express)