WE HUB Launches its First Flagship Rural Incubation Program for Women Entrepreneurs in Telangana

New Delhi: WE HUB, India’s first state-led incubator to foster and promote women entrepreneurship to start up, scale up and accelerate with global market access, today announced call for applications for its newly launched first ever flagship yearlong rural incubation program. The program is launched with a two-fold vision of accelerating existing enterprises as SMEs and strengthening local supply chain.

WE HUB will incubate 50 women entrepreneurs across the state in the five targeted sectors namely manufacturing, textiles and handlooms, FMCG, food processing and handicrafts. The program aims to develop and establish Role Model MSMEs led by Women in Telangana. The role models will be created in each of the five sectors keeping in view of similar economic and geographic conditions. This will enable WE HUB to showcase and create a model which can be adopted by various Govt Entities in scaling MSMEs to be self-sustaining.

The application for the program will close on 15 March 2022 and interested start-ups can apply here. The final list of startups for the cohort will be selected based on the pitching sessions to the jury of WE HUB and the program will commence from April 1st 2022 after the selection of the startups.

Shri Jayesh Ranjan, IAS, Principal Secretary to Government of Telangana, IT E & C Dept, said,” WE HUB has been instrumental in transforming ideas into enterprises and reaching to the impact entrepreneurs across 23 districts of Telangana since its inception. The first ever flagship year-long Rural Incubation program will be one more step towards creating greater impact for women entrepreneurs towards increasing the per capital income for Telangana and India.”

Deepthi Ravula, CEO of WE HUB, said, “Through our Rural Incubation Program, we wish to scale enterprises right from the ideation stage to SMEs in Tier 2 and Tier 3 regions. We will work towards enhancing the entrepreneurship and startup ecosystem of rural India, thereby creating sustainable livelihood, role modelling opportunities and unit establishment, leading to self-employment opportunities. With our experience in developing support mechanisms for 843 entrepreneurs in the past 4 years in Telangana, the upcoming program is curated and handholding program thereby increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in supporting rural woman entrepreneurs.

Keerthi Priya, Co-founder, Nurture Fields, Incubatee at WE Hub said, “WE HUB has played a pivotal role in validating our business model and supported in scaling by creating opportunities of mentoring, packaging, branding, and funding for us. The program was modified to fit into needs of entrepreneurs as it also helped my mother learn various aspects of business through content in regional language’’

The flagship program is designed with a targeted approach to provide various benefits to rural entrepreneurs such as building local value chains, product development roadmap, investor readiness, cross border market connects etc. A cohort of 50 startups will be launched for the rural incubation program. These startups will be given orientation on the program in detail and will receive an opportunity to attend webinars and one-on-one interview sessions by industry experts at WE HUB. The startups will also be provided specific quarterly milestones by WE HUB leaders for need-based assessment.

The startups will be selected based on the following criteria:

Scalable enterprises which are registered, and in operation for two years.
Minimum of 51% stakeholder in the enterprise of women entrepreneur.
Women-led enterprises with a minimum turnover of 15 lakhs per annum. *The turnover criteria may be relaxed for Entrepreneurs from Handicraft sector)
Enterprises providing avenues for employment to minimum of 4 employees.
Place of operation should be out of commercial premises.
Full time and potential revenue generating women entrepreneur.
Enterprises belonging from one of the above mentioned 5 sectors.

The yearlong program will scale up micro and nano women led enterprises through the intervention of technology and/or automation, thereby upgrading them as small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Additionally, through the program, WE HUB is looking to create local employment of the MSMEs in the coming two years.