Riding on the back of the ‘Women First, Prosperity for all’ theme of the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, the Telangana government has announced the launch of a Venture Capital fund with a corpus of Rs 15 crore to fund women enterprises with T-Fund, an investment partner to Telangana’s T-Hub.
The fund will invest anywhere between Rs 25 lakh to Rs 1 crore in startups run by women and will be taken forward by the industries and commerce department of the Telangana government.
Speaking to the media at the end of GES 2017, Telangana IT Minister KT Rama Rao also announced the launch of WE Hub, a startup incubator exclusively for women entrepreneurs. WE Hub will be similar to Telangana’s current startup incubator T-Hub, which is based out of Hyderabad. However, this will not be a part of T-Hub and will be a separate entity run by women.
The idea, KTR says, is to create an entity with government support, while supporting women entrepreneurs with funding and infrastructure.
“We have set a new benchmark with T-Hub for other states. This is another path breaking initiative of Telangana government, which is going to set a new trend of supporting women entrepreneurs. We will create a facility where women feel exactly like T-Hub and we will ensure that with WE Hub, we follow all ingredients that have made T-Hub a success, while keeping it exclusive for women,” he said.
Additionally, the Telangana government also announced that as part of the procurement policy of the government, where 20% of the government procurement comes from private sectors and MSMEs, at least one-fourth of this will be done from women-run enterprises and will be initiated by then government this year.
NITI Aayog too, will support the Telangana government. Following this announcement, Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog announced that it would like to partner with WE Hub through the central government’s Atal innovation Mission.
NITI Aayog also announced that it will create a women’s cell, which will be headed by NITI Aayog advisor Anna Roy. This cell will ensure women entrepreneurs are full supported through the Rs 10,000 crore Fund of Funds and Mudra micro-loan scheme. The cell will also help women entrepreneurs with required mentorship, legal, financing and IP help.
“We are here to support all women enterprises as long as they are viable bankable projects,” Kant added.