IIT Delhi starts initiative for women entrepreneurship programme

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 16

Stating that women are better entrepreneurs than men, IIT-Delhi Director Prof V Ramgopal Rao today launched a national initiative for mentorship and encouragement of women entrepreneurs - WEE Women Entrepreneurship and Empowerment programme.

Open to anyone and everyone - from housewives to businesswomen and college students - WEE will introduce basics of entrepreneurship and business management to 30 women. These women will be selected after presentations of their ideas and a test.

“The idea is also to encourage researchers to start their own company. They have great ideas, but do not know how and where to start,” said Prof Rao while explaining the programme.

The curriculum and the WEE initiative will be launched at IIT-Delhi in September where 30 women will be selected for the WEE program. Sarandeep Singh, WEE program director, explained the selection process for the programme, which is expected to enable a new wave of start-up thought process amongst Indian women. The programme will help women to network and scale up their ideas and develop realistic business plans.

The WEE foundation will take the programme to other colleges and universities (national and international) for which it has already received expressions of interest.

The WEE programme will also be replicated in other areas. It will be applied at colleges and universities and at research incubators coming up in Sonepat and Jhajjar in Haryana. A technology park is coming up in Sonepat with a core engineering base. The Jhajjar facility will include biotechnology and pharmaceuticals and will be linked up with AIIMS Jhajjar.

Explaining the research incubators being developed at Sonepat (technology park) and Jhajjar, Prof Rao said around 100 Centrally funded universities including IITs, NITs and IISERs had been contacted. There would be an exhibition with technologies from these universities by the end of 2016.