Four out of every five women from metros as well as smaller towns in India are eager to start their own businesses and become entrepreneurs, but lack of networks and accessible technological infrastructure are holding them back in their tracks, a top Facebook official has said.
Facebook, in 2017,introduced a programme for women-founded companies — SheLeads Tech — tosupport them with access to community, tools, mentorship and resources tosucceed in building a business in technology.
The programme has nowexpanded to 87 cities in the country with 596 women-led tech start-ups acrossagritech, edutech, gaming and other verticals in just two years since itslaunch.
“If we go backthree years, the number of women-founded startups in the ecosystem were about 9percent and today it has grown to 14 percent.
“Even the moneythat was raised by women entrepreneurs and their startups has increased from3.5 percent to 5.4 percent now,” Satyajeet Singh, head of PlatformPartnerships, South Asia, Facebook told IANS.
India is the thirdlargest startup market globally and with its startup initiatives like SheLeadsTech, Code for the Next Billion, India Innovation Hub and more, Facebook hascome to discover that the startup phenomenon is rapidly expanding to smallercities.
“We have startupscoming from Dehradun, Hubli, Nasik and other smaller cities. The widespreadstartups phenomenon is very much present in tier two and three towns,”Singh said.
Supported by 30 womenmentors, Facebook’s SheLeads Tech initiative aims to provide a platform towomen entrepreneurs across all tech-related sectors like agritech, healthtech,Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), gaming, beauty, sanitation,water harvesting and more.
The educationtechnology sector has especially seen a massive inclination from Indian womenentrepreneurs, according to Facebook.
“Facebook’sSheLeads Tech is a very close community that has helped me stay connected withwhat all is happening in the startup world across the country,” said SaiGole, co-founder of Pune-based startup, LeanAgri, that designs tech solutionsfor unorganised sectors and underserved communities like farmers in India.
“Facebook’straining and mentoring sessions have helped us understand consumer psychologyand ways to target campaigns in the market.”
The social networkinggiant believes that for startups to flourish in India, entrepreneurs in smallertowns must get access to metro-level infrastructure and learning fromestablished people and companies, who are willing to mentor and give back tothe community.
Encouraged by thepositive response that the social networking giant has received through itsstartup boosting initiatives in India, the company now plans to double itsefforts in helping students in technology related fields to escalate thecountry’s businesses and economy.
“We not only haveto invest in startups today, we also have to start investing in startups fortomorrow, like tech students. We have to make sure that we are inspiring themto start up and create more jobs rather than looking for one,” Singhadded. IANS