A hall full of women techies, fashion designers, entrepreneurs and business graduates, discussing business plans, ideating, forming teams and making pitches to investors for the first time in their lives, is definitely a break from the routine.

A total of 234 women, about 40 per cent of them from Tier II and III cities, from varied economic, social, financial and academic backgrounds have gathered here to take part in a three-day bootcamp, ‘Power Tools: Confidence, Leadership and Entrepreneurship’, organised by global non-profit organisation Girls in Tech.

A Rekha from Siddipet district, who just completed her BTech from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad, is all smiles after completing her pitching. Her team has presented an app-based mini-bus service. She says there is a huge demand for bigger transport vehicles in urban and semi-urban areas.

Preety Varma, an entrepreneur, found a four-member team — two engineers and two business graduates — for an impromptu start-up that came up with the idea of collecting, storing and automatically injecting Vitamin D, vital for bone health, depending on the requirements. “Scores of people report poor levels of the vitamin. The IoT device that we propose will address this issue,” she says.

Coaching

Girls in Tech, an organisation promoting an entrepreneurship ecosystem for women, has roped in Hilary Weber of UC Berkeley, who also runs a start-up coaching consultancy, Opportu, to make the 234 women ready for business.

“We received 2,100 applications for the three-day programme. We filtered it down to 234, maintaining a good balance of urban and rural job-seekers and entrepreneurs,” V Sree Divya, Chairman and Managing Director, Girls In Tech India, told BusinessLine .

According to Weber, the biggest challenge for women in taking the plunge into entrepreneurship is wriggling out fear and enhancing vision.

Weber has created a curriculum on how to train and handhold aspiring entrepreneurs through their arduous journey. “The first module is about building confidence — it’s always there, but hiding somewhere. We need to restore it back to help them focus on ideating, developing teams and building businesses,” she said.

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