Telangana, Gujarat sign MoU to support women entrepreneurs

WE HUB, India’s first state-led incubator to foster and promote women entrepreneurship set up by Telangana Government, has announced its partnership with i-Hub of Gujarat, to encourage and support startups in raising capital.

An MoU was inked between Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary, Industries and Information Technology Department, Telangana and Anju Sharma, Principal Secretary, Higher Education, Gujarat.

This partnership will initiate pre-incubation program for 240 aspiring women entrepreneurs in the EdTech, MedTech and Fintech sectors in Telangana and Gujarat. Post 3 months of pre-incubation program, 20 entrepreneurs will be selected for the final virtual/physical co-incubation program.

This co-incubation brings in the startups the opportunity to scale up to viable enterprises and receive solid scale-up and rapid growth mentorship from the leaders at i-Hub and WE HUB. The startups will also have Government supported exposure visits across Telangana and Gujarat.

KT Rama Rao, Telangana IT Minister, said, “When we announced the formation of WE HUB in November 2017, little did people understand the vision of this initiative and the impact it would create. In the last two years, WE Hub has pushed the narrative of democratising entrepreneurship by breaking the barriers that exist for Women Entrepreneurs through its work. We are happy that WE HUB has now become the best practice model for many state governments in India.”

Anju Sharma said, “Through this program, WE Start, we will enable women entrepreneurs to transfer and gain knowledge from each other as well as from WE HUB and i-Hub. The aim of this partnership is to benefit women entrepreneurs from across the country and not just from Gujarat and Telangana.”

Listen to this discussion with WeHub's Deepthi Ravula

Deepthi Ravula, CEO, WE HUB said, “We are glad to collaborate with i-Hub to promote Women Entrepreneurship across Telangana and Gujarat. Through this collaboration, we are going to equip i-Hub with the learnings, knowledge and ecosystem we have developed in the past 3 years working with over 3,400 Women Entrepreneurs, 11 startup programs, incubating 148 startups and creating over 300 jobs.”