The government plans to give special thrust in 2020 to encourage women entrepreneurship within the country, especially the micro women entrepreneurs to start new businesses and scale up existing enterprises in Assam, Rajasthan and Telangana.
“There are plans to expand the pilot project ‘Economic Empowerment of Women Entrepreneurs and Start-ups by Women’ which have shown tremendous promise in the last six months,” an official in Ministry of Women and Child Development told SheAtWork.
The ambitious Economic Empowerment of Women Entrepreneurs and Start-ups by Women program is being run in collaboration with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) Germany. The project, pilot’s incubation and acceleration programmes for The project has the target to incubation programme with 250 women and the acceleration programme with 100 women.
The Union Minister for Women and Child Development Smriti Z Irani recently told Lok Sabha in a written reply that Under Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP), scheme women entrepreneurs are provided 25% and 35% subsidies for projects set up in urban and rural areas respectively. For women beneficiaries, own contribution is only 5% of the project cost while for the general category it is 10%.
All the entrepreneurs including women are eligible for two weeks Entrepreneurship Development Programme (EDP) after the sanction of their projects from banks for financial assistance to set up their unit.
The Ministry will also add special features to make “UdyamSakhi” portal, the official said. It was launched to encouraging women entrepreneurs to aid, counsel, assist and protect their interests. It is a platform for emerging Women Entrepreneurs of India to get support, to understand the current scenario of industries and to get guidance in various aspects of entrepreneurship.
It helps Indian women to start, build and grow businesses and creating business models revolving around low-cost products and services to resolve social inequities.
Other ministries in the government, like Commerce and Industry, are also working to promote women entrepreneurs in India. A special thrust to build a strong eco-system for nurturing innovation and Startups in the country by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry has set aside 10% of the total corpus of Fund of Funds amounting to Rs 1000 crore, for women-led start-ups.
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