Hyderabad: Whether it is by providing support to a 20-year-old entrepreneur from Karimnagar, setting up machinery for making gold ornaments by providing credit linkages, or helping women entrepreneurs from rural and tribal regions of Telangana, WE-Hub is changing the narrative of startup incubators.
From starting off by enabling and mentoring urban-born and mostly tech-based startups founded by women, WE-Hub is now looking at expanding its horizons to support women entrepreneurs from every nook and corner of the State.
“We started off with rural women entrepreneurship initiative as we wanted to move away from entrepreneurship being an urban concept. We wanted to make it a more democratic notion wherein anyone with an idea from any part of the State can pursue their dreams. We wanted to provide it a more curated process and that is why we partnered with an international organization to implement the program. We started in 2019 and focused on seven districts in Telangana as we did not want to get too ambitious,” said Deepthi Ravula, CEO, WE-Hub.
Last year, the incubation hub for women entrepreneurs selected 30 entrepreneurs out of 3,500 participants at the boot camp and the 113 pitches it received. For the second cohort, the hub received 555 applications of which 150 entrepreneurs went through the pitching process and looking to scale up to 100 entrepreneurs and plans to go to all 33 districts in the State.
The application for the second cohort of Project Her & Now is open for rural women entrepreneurs. Other than the partnership with GIZ, WE-Hub is also partnering with local ecosystem players like Mission for Elimination of Poverty in Municipal Areas (MEPMA), local district officials, and Collectors.
Through these collaborations, the incubator is looking to help local entrepreneurs scale up in their region with local support. “From the first cohort, we learned that there is a difference between entrepreneur and self-livelihood and we wanted to concentrate on entrepreneurs. However, now we are also looking at helping women working in the livelihood space scale up to become entrepreneurs,” Ravula said.
Asked if the incubator is looking at expanding its wings beyond Telangana, Ravula said in affirmative that their main focus is on helping women entrepreneurs from this State. “However, if any State wants to learn from us and emulate the same, we are always ready to help,” she said.
