WE HUB Organised One of a Kind 'Girls in STEAM' Conference to Mark International Women’s Day

From discussing gender gap in STEAM fields to celebrating the women entrepreneurs from the state, the event was focussed on breaking the Bias

The event had eminent speakers such as Mr. Jayesh Ranjan, Ms. Deepthi Ravula, Mr. Andrew Fleming, Ms. Katherine Von Ofenheim amongst others sharing thought-provoking insights.

WE HUB, India’s first and only state-led incubator by the Government of Telangana to foster and promote women entrepreneurship to start-up, scale-up and accelerate with global market access, today organised an exclusive one-of-its kind ‘Girls in STEAM’ Conference to mark the International Women’s Day. Aimed at recognizing undulating spirit of Girls in STEAM, the event emphasized accomplishment of the 'Data Science for students' program and provided a platform to the inspiring women leaders, women entrepreneurs, corporate and government representatives to share their remarkable stories.

The event brought together eminent dignitaries such as Mr. Jayesh Ranjan, IAS Principal Secretary, ITE&C Department, Government of Telangana, Ms. Deepthi Ravula, CEO, WE HUB, Mr. Andrew Fleming, UK Consulate General, Ms. Katherine Von Ofenheim, US, Vice Consulate, Mr. Malcolm, head of School, Srinidhi international School, Ms. Srilakshmi, Keystone (Robotics) amongst others. The event took off with a welcome address and a presentation by seven groups on topic such as Decent work and Economic Growth, Inequalities in the Workspace, Girls Education in Rural India, Visual Impairment etc.

 
Jayesh Ranjan, IAS, Principal Secretary ITE&C Department, Telangana, said,” WE HUB has been instrumental in transforming ideas into fruition and inspiring women across Telangana and India since the past 4 years. The first of its kind Girls in STEAM program in association with WiDS, Stanford University and MathWorks is a pillar in the Student Entrepreneurs vertical of WE HUB. It is delightful to see various students from the states of Jammu and Kashmir, Assam and Telangana, congregating to create solutions for creating a positive impact in the society, and paving paths to a brighter future.”

Speaking on the occasion, Deepthi Ravula, CEO of WE HUB said,” Women are the foundation of development. At WE HUB we firmly believe that women make significant contributions to the workplace, to society, community, and family. We see the Girls in STEAM as a key step er program in that direction. This pilot was with 6 international schools to ensure that we create a best practise model which can be scaled slowly but surely to more than 100 schools by next year and collaborate with more corporate partners, industries.”

The audience of the event was 150 which comprised of 75 Girl Students from the program, representatives from 4 schools (Keystone, Chirec, Oakridge, Srinidhi) and Corporates such as Mathworks, Boston Dynamics, Qualcomm, S&P & Wells Fargo. Aiming to encourage more girls to pursue STEAM courses, Hon. Mr. Andrew Fleming, UK Consulate General presented the global view of Girls in STEAM during the event. Further, the program winners were facilitated by Hon. Ms. Katherine von Ofenheim, US Consulate General.

The 'Data Science for students' program was launched in Telangana in June 2021. Through its 'Data Science for students' program, WE HUB has trained 75 girl students across 3 states in India to actively think about solutions to real-world problems which can create an impact on the environment and society. Girls were trained to apply principles of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence to solve India-specific problems. Further, the program was concluded by organising the 'Girls in STEAM' Conference.

WE HUB also announced its collaboration with MathWorks during the event which was forged in the presence of Mr. Sanjay Gopinath, Marketing lead, MathWorks India. This collaboration will help young minds understand data handling in a lucid manner and be adept to the future of data science.

Since past 4 years, WE HUB has been actively working towards enabling Women led start-ups across sectors scale & accelerate through global market access. Till now, WE HUB has incubated 238 technology enabled start-ups by Women founders.

About WE HUB:

WE HUB is the first-of-its-kind and only state-run platform for women entrepreneurs by the Government of Telangana. WE HUB supports women entrepreneurs with innovative ideas, solutions and entities focusing on emerging areas in technology and allied sectors. WE HUB also supports under-explored/unexplored sectors, such as FMCG, retail, e-commerce, including the service sector. The mandate and goal of WE HUB are to eliminate financial and societal barriers for women and help them succeed in their enterprises. WE HUB aims to create a supportive community for aspiring and existing women entrepreneurs where they can interact with VCs for funding, connect with corporates for scaling up their business, get advice from mentors to fine-tune ideas and benefit from technical mentoring.

Millennial Women's Investments in P2P Lending Rises by 430% - Study

• 30% and 150% rise in women investors and borrowers respectively in FY 21-22
• Mumbai and Hyderabad ranked top in terms of women investing in P2P lending
• Witnesses 150% Y-o-Y growth in women borrowers across the country
• More than 36% of all female borrowers returned to reapply for a loan
• With only a 3.37% default rate; women prove to be better borrowers than men

Mumbai, India's financial city, ranked top, followed by Hyderabad, the city of Nizams, in terms of the highest number of women borrowing from P2P lending platforms as per the data. LenDenClub, the country's leading Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Lending platform, released the report of women investors and borrowers on the P2P lending platform. The data further revealed that Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad lead the race in terms of women investing in P2P space.

According to analysis, there has been a whopping 430% rise in women investors in the P2P lending space in the financial year 2022 compared with FY21. There has also seen a 150% increase in women borrowers on the borrower side y-o-y basis. The study was conducted on the data from 20,165 women investors and borrowers in P2P lending for the period April 2021 to March 2022.

The report further revealed that young and social media-friendly women are much ahead of previous generations when it comes to borrowing or even availing of the P2P lending platform as an investment asset class. Millennial women aged 21-30 years were the most active borrowers, i.e. 56%, and lenders, i.e. 54%. It was followed by the cohort in the age group of 31-40 years that accounted for 37% and 33% in the case of borrowers and lenders, respectively.

Data highlights that Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Lending is fast emerging as an alternative investment option for women. According to the study, the highest number, i.e. over 50% of women, fall in the age group of 31 to 40, and the average amount invested is INR 50,000 in P2P lending. Of the women who invested in the platform, 100% of them re-invested their money. Female investors in P2P come from metro cities. Hyderabad, Bangalore and Mumbai are the top cities where these women lenders invested in the asset class.

With rising education and awareness levels of financial products, an increasing number of women have appeared to take their own financial decisions. Indian women were perceived to be disinterested and unaware of their financial management, but the situation seems to be changing amid the pandemic.

Due to the pandemic, women mostly borrowed from medical emergencies to care for themselves and their family's healthcare. Data revealed that most women borrowed from the platform in the month of April 2021, when Covid's second wave was at its peak. Women also borrowed money for educational purposes indicating that they are career-focused and planning their future effectively by availing credit facilities from P2P lending platforms. The data revealed that Hyderabad & Mumbai were the top cities where the most women benefited from credit.

Women seem to be more particular about repayment of their loans, resulting in LenDenClub experiencing only 3.37% of women delayed or defaulted in the payment. They borrowed amounts as high as Rs 7 lakh and as low as Rs 10,000, whereas the average ticket size of borrowing stood at Rs.70,000. The platform saw over 50% of women borrowers fall between 21 to 30 years of age, indicating that women from Gen-Z and millennial cohort, who are also more acquainted with technology, are comfortable taking digital loans.

Bhavin Patel, Cofounder and CEO of LenDenClub, "We have witnessed a rise in investments from women, especially during the pandemic. The P2P lending space is regulated by RBI and awareness about it is still low among the women counterpart. It has emerged as a better asset class for the investors and source credit during emergencies for the borrowers.

We believe that more awareness about the platform will increase participation from women in tier-1 and tier-2 cities. The easy access to online avenues of financial independence encourages women to make their own financial decisions. India can achieve better financial inclusion with more participation from women. We, at LenDenClub, help our women investors diversify their portfolios with high investment rates, while we encourage women borrowers to take out instant loans in times of need."

About LenDenClub

LenDenClub is a leading peer-to-peer lending platform that provides an alternate investment opportunity to investors or lenders looking for high returns with creditworthy borrowers looking for short term personal loans. With 1 million+ investors on board, LenDenClub has become a go-to platform to earn returns in the range of 10%-12%. LenDenClub offers investors a convenient medium to browse thousands of borrower profiles to achieve better returns than traditional asset classes. Moreover, LenDenClub is safeguarded by market volatility and inflation. LenDenClub provides a great way to diversify your investment portfolio.

Additionally, with more than 2.5 million+ borrowers, InstaMoney, its borrowing platform has disbursed over Rs. 2,000 crores of loans to date. It offers instant personal loans to salaried individuals with flexible loan tenure. The platform aims to foster financial inclusion by leveraging technology to support borrowers with hassle-free loans, even in the remotest parts of the country. InstamMoney also provides small merchant loans of up to Rs. 1,50,000 to borrowers who are into SME business. Through InstaMoney’s partnership with merchants, Instamoney also extends the popular service of Buy Now Pay Later to the end consumers or shoppers.

T-Hub Celebrates Outstanding Achievements of 50 Women Entrepreneurs and Leaders to Mark International Women’s Day

T-Hub hosted its first of kind event ‘The Womenpreneur’ bringing together all the stakeholders to celebrate the tremendous contributions and achievements of women entrepreneurs and leaders.

The event had 20+ eminent speakers delivering inspiring and insightful keynotes and panel sessions and had 250+ attendees join the event physically as well as virtually.

T-Hub, which leads India’s pioneering innovation ecosystem, organised ‘The Womenpreneur’ event with thought-provoking conversations from women entrepreneurs, women leaders, government representatives to inspire the next generation of leaders and dreamers this International Women's Day. The event had 20+ eminent speakers delivering inspiring and insightful keynotes and panel sessions and had 250+ attendees join the event physically as well as virtually.

With the spirit of innovate, inspire, and ignite, the event aimed at understanding the journey of women entrepreneurs, how they overcame gender bias in their growth journey, with the support of ecosystem enablers such as T-Hub, WE HUB, TSIC etc. The event brought together eminent dignitaries such as Dr. S. Glory Swarupa, Director General, National Institute of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (NIMSME), Anu Acharya, CEO, Mapmygenome, Cerasela Tanasescu, Director, La Trobe University, Dr. Shanta Thoutam, Chief innovation officer (CIO), Telangana State Innovation Cell (TSIC).

  
MSR, CEO, T-Hub addressing the event said, “The overall number of women enterprises and jobs these enterprises create in the country are very less currently, and I believe that all the ecosystem stakeholders should come and work together to find ways and means that will help create an impact where potentially we can create 40 million women enterprises in India in the coming years and possibly create about 150 to 170 million jobs from those enterprises. This requires a profound transformation that will help empower our personal, economic, social status. Today’s collaboration is one such opportunity for us to reflect, to think, and to come up with ideas on how we can accelerate this whole transformation piece.”

Dr. S. Glory Swarupa in her special address talked about one of the biggest difficulties for women is access to finance. Studies have shown women entrepreneurs can create millions of jobs, contributing to the economy and as a national institution taking responsibility for women's participation in MSME, NIMSME is keeping a 3-year vision - and have shared its proposal to the MSME ministry on the difficulty women are facing and how to overcome this.

Anu Acharya in her keynote address pointed out how the next generation is gender-free and that we might not need to have discussions on removing gender biases but on the way forward strategy to strengthen the women workforce.

Another keynote speech, which was addressed by Dr. Shanta Thoutam, talked about how some of the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs are being overcome through incubation centres like T-Hub, and WE HUB. Shanta urged the women entrepreneurs to trust in their decisions while running their own businesses.

The event organised a fireside chat session on ‘Women trailblazing entrepreneurship’ moderated by Deepthi R, Chief Executive Officer, WE HUB with the panel members Tanuja Abburi, Founder, Beyond Pinks, Kritika Narula, Lead, Regulatory Affairs and Public Policy, Startup India, Government of India, Rashida Adenwala, Co-founder & Partner, R & A Associates, Jugnu Jain, CEO, Sapien Biosciences, Sreedevi Devireddy, VP - Startup Ecosystem, XELP, Sabina Kamal, Founder & COO Paytm m'Loyal (Mobiquest).

The event also witnessed the book launch by MSR for the book “Accelerating Her Business” co-authored by Poornima Shenoy and Supriya Panchangam. Keeping the strong narrative for women in India, the event showcased inspiring voyages of founders like Priya Ananth, Co-founder, Life Circle, Kalpana Ramesh, Founder of Rainwater Harvest Project and Krupala Nune, COO of LifeOfGirl startup.

A panel discussion titled “Women entrepreneurs as the next frontier for employment” was also organised which was led by Rashmi Pimpale, CEO, Research and Innovation Circle of Hyderabad (RICH), Government of Telangana, with panelists Madhura Dasgupta Sinha, Founder & CEO, Aspire For Her, Samir Sathe, Executive Vice President, Wadhwani Foundation, Poornima Shenoy and Supriya Panchangam, Authors of Accelerating Her Business book.

T-Hub also took this opportunity to felicitate 50 people to honour their contribution in inspiring, retaining and enabling the spirit of women entrepreneurship across the globe. These included women entrepreneurs like Anindita Banik, CEO, of SmartWinnr, Sarada Kalavapudi, Founder of Hivedin, Aparna Bhogu, Co-Founder of Monitra, Hema Nandiraju, Co-founder of HESA Global, and women mentors like Neetika Maheshwari, Founder of Accelero Corporation, Nirajita Mitra, Senior Director at Oracle India, Mytri Reddy, Partner at Varuna Law Associates, Nandita Sethi, Founder and Managing Director of The Entrepreneur Zone, and corporate women leaders like Rajita Singh, Head HR of Broadridge Financial Services, Urvashi Katyal, Strategic Partnership Manager, Community & Impact at Meta, and Swetha Balasa, Director at Honeywell Aerospace, among others.

The event concluded with an introduction to Startup India Awards 2022 by Aakanksha Chandra, Associate, Startup India, Government of India which will identify and celebrate innovations across 17 sectors, 50 sub-sectors and 7 special categories.

T-Hub has designed and delivered 100+ innovation programs in the last 6 years, enabling 1800+ startups to scale nationally and globally, and connected them with various influential ecosystem stakeholders. T-Hub will continue to develop strategic programs to elevate the levels of innovation by effectively engaging stakeholders and will keep supporting other ecosystem enablers – TSIC, T-Works, WE HUB, RICH, TASK by sharing knowledge and resources, as and when needed.

ABOUT T-HUB

T-Hub (Technology Hub) is an innovation hub and ecosystem enabler. Based out of Hyderabad, India, T-Hub leads India’s pioneering innovation ecosystem. With a mission of enabling and empowering an ecosystem hungry for innovation, T-Hub is creating impact for startups, corporations and other innovation ecosystem stakeholders. Incorporated in 2015, it has provided over 1800+ national and international startups with access to better technology, talent, mentors, customers, corporates, investors, and government agencies. It has elevated innovation for leading national and global corporations, transforming their business models for the better. Working in collaboration with innovation partners and enablers in Telangana, India and worldwide, T-Hub is building a future-ready innovation ecosystem.

Venture Catalysts Ties with Wopreneur to Launch Incubation Programme for Women Entrepreneurs

Venture Catalysts, India’s first integrated incubator, recently joined hands with Women entrepreneurship focused ecosystem facilitator Wopreneur to initiate an incubation programme dedicated to assist women entrepreneurs in their start-up journey.

The initiative was developed after realizing the massive need to extend formal funding facilities to the growing number of women entrepreneurs in the country, by providing them systematic training and know-how to develop their business model, fine tune ideas, enhance pitching capabilities and create better value for the segment.

The 12 week women entrepreneur exclusive incubation programme was started after interviewing more than 4806 women entrepreneurs across the country, which helped VCats and Wopreneur to zero in on the target areas and boost the collective woman entrepreneurial ecosystem as a whole.

Application Link - https://goo.gl/a3Vrsb

Women entrepreneurs have traditionally found it difficult to
acquire sufficient capital to support their business ventures due to various
socio-economic reasons. For instance, women generally do not have the rights to
familial property, which stops them from using it as mortgage or collateral to
raise business funds. As a result, they have to either opt for informal lending
sources with higher interest rate or turn to friends and acquaintances, which
are ineffective when large amount of corpus is involved. The initiative was
developed to help women entrepreneurs overcome this bottleneck, and provide
them comprehensive training during the entire pre and post pitching stage that
helps them pitch their ideas effectively to institutional investors.

Commenting on the programme, Dr. ApoorvRanjan Sharma,
Founder, Venture Catalysts said, “Through our extensive networking
events and efforts to reach out to the start-up community, we realized that the
numbers of women entrepreneurs across the country were steadily growing.
However, these highly talented business women were under-confident of their
abilities to raise funds and pitch their ideas to potential investors, due to a
lack of exposure to such scenarios.

We joined hands with Wopreneur, a dedicated women
entrepreneurial ecosystem facilitator platform to fill this gap by undertaking
a detailed, mentoring focused incubation programme that empowers women
entrepreneurs. Furthermore, the programme is set to conclude with a pitching
event wherein the best business ideas and entrepreneurs will be pitching their
concepts to the large networking community of VCats. We believe that the programme
will be a huge step forward in facilitating the growth of women
entrepreneurship in the country and transform them into strong, self-reliant
and experienced entrepreneurial figures ready to engage with institutional
investors and strike deals that optimize the growth and value prospects of
their business along with enriching the women entrepreneur community with lots
of opportunities and prospects.”

Wopreneur, with a 10,000+ strong community of women
entrepreneurs and professionals, has been at the forefront of empowering women
business leaders compete shoulder-to-shoulder with the best in the business.
“It is disappointing to see great business ideas developed by women
entrepreneurs be stuck in anonymity due to a paucity of funds or lack of
investment opportunities.” Founder, Neha Chatterjee, Wopreneur
said. “VCats, being one of the biggest investment incubators in Asia, has
strongly backed this movement that will certainly have larger socio-economic
ramifications, rather than the immediate huge objective of enabling women
entrepreneurs seek the necessary funds to launch their projects through
independent negotiations with famous investors. Through our 10 month long
research, we realized how crucial a role formal investment can play in bringing
these ideas to the forefront of the start-up ecosphere and why training is
necessary for the entrepreneurs to defeat this status quo. We hope the
participants will be able to generate a lot of funds post the programme through
pitching events, and break many glass ceilings in the process.”

Application process to attend the programme will begin from
March 8 onwards and interested candidates can connect via the social media
pages of VCats as well as Wopreneur.The initiative seems to serve as the
perfect training ground for women entrepreneurs looking to hone their pitching,
networking and fund-raising skills, while the subsequent pitching event will
serve as the ideal launch pad for high potential business ideas to secure the
funds required to convert their business vision into a reality.

About Venture Catalysts (@vcatsIndia)

Venture Catalysts is India’s first
integrated incubator. It invests $250K – $1.5 Million in early stage
startups that has potential to create enduring value for over a long period of
time.

Venture Catalysts brings lethal
combination of Capital, Mentoring and Business Network to help investee
companies to succeed. Our innovation provides value to startups through its
angel network, funding, community, services and co-working facility.

About Wopreneurs

Wopreneur believes that
financial empowerment of women is most important, hence team Wopreneur is
creating an ecosystem for Women Entrepreneurs to help them realise their
potential. Wopreneur believes that if women step up and use their resilience,
grit and focus they can achieve anything.