A three-day event organised by Tie Global in partnership with the US
embassy marked the start of mentorship program AIRSWEEE (All India
Roadshow for Women’s Economic Empowerment through Entrepreneurship)
Scale-Up Fellowships last month.
Seema Chaturvedi, chairman of AIRSWEEE, said women were more aware of environmental necessities in society as they have generally been addressed as problem solvers in the Indian context. This is why, she said, woman entrepreneurs come up with sustainable ideas.
Asked about where India stood globally in terms of the opportunities that women entrepreneurs receive, former secretary of the Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade Ramesh Abhishek said, “We still have a long way to go in the Indian start-up industry, in which roughly 10% are female founders. It’s because the ecosystem doesn’t support women. But attention is slowly going towards this and I think there’s a lot of support coming in to change the narrative. We have to take extra measures to ensure that women entrepreneurs attain a bigger milestone.”
The AIRSWEEE project, launched in 2016, has empowered more
than 575 women in the country across 100 cities in 20 states. In 2019,
a group of selected mentors from the USA interacted with Indian based
entrepreneurs in order to develop a resource based understanding of
how to empower women entrepreneurs.
All women selected through the programme will travel to the United
States for 10 days where they will follow closely the work of CEOs of
aligned global companies. The three selected entrepreneurs for this
year are Tharakeshwari Palanisamy, founder and CEO of Ganya Agro
Products Pvt Ltd; Shraddha Khare, Director of Instant Rasoi OPC Pvt. Ltd; and Zaiba Sarang, founder of iThink Logistics, a Mumbai-based company engaged in AI-driven technology for the Indian logistics industry.
The project is also ready to hit Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities in the country.
Content Team
Himanshu
Shree Lahiri
