The case for supplier diversity has been championed in the US and other developed economies overtwo decades. In India, the awareness around women-owned businesses and their importance to the eco-system has grown gradually.

Large MNCs in India customising their global supplier diversity initiatives to the Indian landscape have proved catalysts. At WEConnect International’s annual conference ‘Think Big’ in Bangalore recently, the presence of representatives from corporate names like Accenture, Walmart and Marriott India made a statement. Since the first ‘Think Big’ event last year, WEConnect has some concrete achievements to report.

“We’ve been able to get some large corporations in India to analyse their existing supplier database so that the women-owned businesses supplying them get WEConnect certified. Many of them have begun asking ‘Are you a woman-owned business?’ in their RFP process. They work with their internal teams to build a business case for supplier diversity,” says Sucharita Eashwar, India Head, WeConnect International.

The named corporations and others have taken the lead in making a business case within their organisations for women entrepreneurs to be introduced into their supply chain.

Marriot Hotels India has been a part of WeConnect for 2-3 years. Bharanidharan Ramaswamy, Director of Procurement – India, Marriott Hotels India, shares “We have an active database of women entrepreneurs who we are currently partnered with, as well as access to other databases that help us to identify prospective women entrepreneurs, with the endeavour to use them as far as possible. Marriott promotes gender diversity as a part of its core culture and supplier diversity is indeed an integral part of it.”

E-commerce platform Walmart wants to “incrementally increase” the number of women-owned businesses in its supply chain. Rajneesh Kumar, Vice-President - Corporate Affairs, Walmart India shares, “There is huge commitment from our leadership… We want to source $20 billion from women-owned businesses for our US business by the end of 2016. We would like to double what we source from women-owned businesses for our international markets by the end of 2016. We will also launch a dedicated e-commerce platform called ‘Empowering Women Together’ on Walmart.com to give small women-owned businesses access to our customers.”

Both Marriott India and Walmart encourage women-owned businesses in their supply chain to get a WEConnect certification. “While interacting with them, we explain to them the benefits of the WEConnect platform such as networking with other women entrepreneurs, access to large corporations and trainings offered by WEConnect,” says Ramaswamy.

Kumar explains why it makes business sense to include more women-owned businesses in their supply chains. “Going by surveys and Walmart’s experience over the years - end customers or members are mostly women and so women suppliers understand the perspective of shoppers better,” he says.

Shrilakshmi Desiraju is Co-founder of Triphase Pharmaceuticals is a WEConnect member. Specialising in probiotic formulations that are tailored for prevention and the management of diseases, the company has clients largely in the South and four large corporations as clients abroad.

Fortune 500 Although not WEConnect certified in India yet, Desiraju says, “My initial contacts were through WEConnect. We’re establishing a company in Canada soon which will be WEConnect certified. My experience has been that Fortune 500 companies are interested in our offerings. Even though we’re small, they are interested in handholding us to improve our infrastructure and other aspects of our business.”

Usha Ananthasubramanian, Chairman and MD of the Bharatiya Mahila Bank, actor and classical dancer Mallika Sarabhai and film and theatre artist Kalki Koechlin were speakers at ‘Think Big’ this year. WEConnect now has a presence in 15 countries.

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