IIMB launched nationwide “Women Start-up Programme” by Goldman Sachs

On 8th January 2018, the NSRCEL at IIMB announced the launch of the nationwide “Women Start-up Programme (WSP),” funded by Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), a global investment bank and active investor in India, and the Department of Science & Technology (DST), Government of India. The WSP is India’s first customized online and classroom initiative designed to enthuse aspiring female entrepreneurs-in-the-making across the country. The programme seeks to facilitate the growth of women entrepreneurs by providing in-depth training to foster and augment managerial and entrepreneurial skills through mentoring, incubation, and financial support.

During the coming year, the WSP will provide training for up to 12,000 women through its five-week “Do Your Venture” Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), which has been customized to encourage women to systematically identify and test their business ideas. Thereafter, 300 women entrepreneurs-to-be will be shortlisted for a boot camp to be held at partner campuses in the towns nearest to them, where they will receive classroom instructions on communications and customer interaction. From the 300 ventures, a select 100 women entrepreneurs will then travel to IIMB for a second boot camp, where they will receive classroom instructions on developing a business plan, understanding costing and pricing, sales and marketing, and negotiation skills. During this period, they will also have networking opportunities with successful women entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, IIMB students, and Goldman Sachs professionals. After the completion of the boot camp, these women entrepreneurs will have their business ideas incubated for a year at a partner institution of their choice where each women will also receive INR 30,000 per month for financial support and funding from a small prototype fund to run their ventures. The partner institutions are CIIE’s Innocity, Ahmedabad, IIM Indore, IIM Nagpur, IIM Udaipur, IIM Visakhapatnam, and Presidency University, Kolkata.

(L-R) Professor G. Raghuram, Director, IIM Bangalore, Mr. Ravi Krishnan, Chief Administrative Officer, Goldman Sachs (Bengaluru), Dr. Anita Gupta, Adviser and Scientist G, Department of Science & Technology, Govt. of India, Ms. Nirmala Sankaran, IIMB alumna and Co-Founder of HeyMath! and Prof. Suresh Bhagavatula, Director of WSP 2017-18 and Chairperson of NSRCEL’s Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Development; Professor G Raghuram, Director,  welcomed the launch of WSP 2017-18, saying programmes such as WSP can break “implicit biases”; Mr. Sonjoy Chatterjee, Chairman and Co-CEO, Goldman Sachs (India), deliverd his message  through a video message, and hopes for wider reach and greater scale for this edition of the programme)