6 OCTOBER: Gender Parity in businesses has significantly improved in the last few years as a result of more women coming out to run businesses with the help of the government and big tech companies creating more spaces for them.
In two major developments, technology giants Google & Visa have announced individual initiatives (respectively) that will help women entrepreneurs gain skills and investments for their businesses.
Google to nurture 20 startups by Indian women founders
On 3 October 2022 Google announced the first batch of 20 women-founded/co-founded startups, selected from close to 400 applications under its ‘Google for Startups Accelerator-India Women Founders’ programme.
The program is part of a larger effort by Google towards improving the representation of women across different sections of India’s digitally-trained workforce. It has been curated with the ultimate objective of making technology universally relevant, promoting entrepreneurship, and helping women professionals looking to upskill, and young graduates seeking to begin their careers.
The tech giant has designed this program specifically for women-founded startups, placing special emphasis on subjects like access to networks, access to capital, hiring challenges, mentorship and many others which, for a variety of social reasons and low representation, prove challenging for female founders.
Visa commits $1 million to empower women-focused businesses in India
In another big development, Visa has pledged $1 million to United Way Mumbai (UWM) to empower women-owned and women-focused businesses over the next three years.
The project, to be implemented in 170 villages/towns across Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Maharashtra, and Karnataka, will train over 8,500 women. It will focus on creating sustainable, long-term skills for entrepreneurship among participants and provide women entrepreneurs with financial services relevant to their enterprises and communities.
“At Visa, we have strongly advocated and supported the growth of small businesses particularly those focused on women,” Sandeep Ghosh, Group Country Manager, India & South Asia, Visa, said while speaking to media. He further added that this partnership with United Way Mumbai will impart financial and entrepreneurship skills to women from communities that do not enjoy the same access and privileges as many others.
The Visa-UWM project has been created to target three core impact areas: access to knowledge and services for financial inclusion, entrepreneurship development, and the formation of sustainable self-help groups.
Both of these initiatives by Google and Visa intend to provide skilling as well as financial support to women entrepreneurs thereby expanding the sea of opportunities and ensuring enlarged participation by them.