Project Her&Now is a seven-month incubation and six-month acceleration programme for which WE-Hub has partnered with GIZ.
Hyderabad: Telangana-based incubator to foster women entrepreneurs, WE-Hub on Thursday announced the opening of its application for the second cohort of the ‘Her&Now’ programme implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. The first cohort of 30 startups graduated last year by formally registering their enterprises and raising finances through credit linkages and equity investments.
Project Her&Now is a seven-month incubation and six-month acceleration programme for which WE-Hub has partnered with GIZ. As part of the project, WE-Hub is implementing it in Telangana and helping close to 100 women entrepreneurs for the second cohort from Tier 2 and 3 cities to set up and scale their enterprises. The call for applications begins on Thursday and will close on July 20. Interested startups from all the sectors, except for trading and service sectors, can apply at https://wehub.telangana.gov.in/project-her-now.html in English or Telugu.
WE-Hub CEO Deepthi Ravula said, “The success of the first cohort has proved that the tier II and tier III regions of Telangana has women with a strong entrepreneurial spirit and we were proud to scout, speak, select and enable them to startup and scale-up their businesses thereby providing jobs and impetus in the local economy.”
While for the incubation programme, any woman entrepreneur who wants to run a for-profit enterprise or any jointly-run enterprise with a woman founder with the enterprise being informally run can apply. On the other hand, the acceleration programme seeks application from women entrepreneurs who have been running the business for at least one year. The final set of startups chosen for the programme will receive customised and tailor-made programmes, real-world insights from mentors and funding-readiness through pitch support.
More than 70 per cent of the enterprises under the incubation programme from the first cohort have been able to advance their enterprises and about 85 per cent of the enterprises have formally registered their organisations by procuring an Udyog Aadhar Certification. About 45 per cent of the enterprises in the acceleration programme have been able to receive access to finances through credit linkages to the extent of Rs 1.22 crore. Furthermore, 20 per cent of the enterprises have received equity investments to the extent of Rs 2.8 crore and 40 per cent of the enterprises have recorded an increase in their employee numbers.
