BharatPe Group Collaborates with Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP) to Empower Women Entrepreneurs in India
- ByStartupStory | April 15, 2023
BharatPe Group has announced a collaboration with Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP) with the goal of assisting women entrepreneurs across India on their paths to self-sufficiency and business growth. The collaboration aims to create a robust ecosystem that brings together women entrepreneurs from across India and equips them with the domain knowledge, as well as the financial and technical know-how, needed to achieve their business objectives. The primary goal will be to facilitate the creation of a first-of-its-kind aggregator platform that provides access to peer support, mentorship, networking channels, and a diverse range of learning resources.
This partnership, launched under BharatPe Cares, a corporate social responsibility initiative of the BharatPe Group, aligns with the group’s purpose of empowering lives through inclusive, innovative, and dependable fintech solutions. This initiative is part of the CSR programme of PAYBACK, a BharatPe company. According to the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation’s sixth economic census, women account for only 13.76% of all entrepreneurs in India (8.05 million out of a total of 58.5 million). The figure suggests that women entrepreneurs must be empowered in order to pursue their dreams. The partnership aims to address the constraints that women entrepreneurs face and to create a level playing field so that women have equal opportunities for growth.
“There is huge untapped potential for unlocking entrepreneurship among women in India. WEP has an impeccable body of work towards driving women entrepreneurship in the country, and we are proud to partner with them on our shared vision of enabling women entrepreneurs to catalyse the growth of their businesses,” he said.
Negi went on to say that the homegrown fintech’s regular engagement with female solopreneurs and small business owners had helped them understand their challenges, the most significant of which were a lack of access to financial know-how, networking channels, mentorship, and fundraising opportunities. According to an industry report, women entrepreneurs in India can create 150-170 million jobs by 2030, accounting for more than 25% of the total new jobs required for the working-age population.
“Thus, driving women entrepreneurship will boost the economy through job creation, and is critical to making India a $5 trillion economy. Our partnership with WEP is aimed at facilitating the development of plug-and-play digital infrastructure to address existing gaps and aid the growth of women entrepreneurs,” he said.
According to Anna Roy, Mission Director, WEP, the entrepreneurial ecosystem in India is thriving, but women-led businesses still require a lot of support to help scale businesses, especially due to social biases.
“Women entrepreneurs across the country face an unfair disadvantage due to exclusion from networking channels and mentorship opportunities. WEP aims to provide a continuum of support by leveraging the network of various stakeholders who are part of the ecosystem,” she said.
WEP, which was conceived and incubated at NITI Aayog, aggregates resources and services for female entrepreneurs, providing them with personalised information and services to help them on their entrepreneurial journeys. The goal is to seamlessly connect all stakeholders across the board, overcome information asymmetry, and empower women by providing the right information at the right time.
“With the partnership with BharatPe Group, WEP adds another important stakeholder to this vast and growing network of partner organisations to help level the playing field for women entrepreneurs and expand the funnel to get more women to start their own enterprises,” Roy said.
BharatPe will also support the creation of learning resources focused on specific industries in order to support capability development and provide women entrepreneurs with the domain knowledge they need to scale their businesses.
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