Womenergy: Empowering Women Entrepreneurs in India

Womenergy is a platform for women created by Deepthi Reddy in 2015 to bring forward one lakh women entrepreneurs and helping them to set up their own ventures. Even while half of our population is made up of women, they only contribute 17% to the GDP of our nation. Womenergy is an initiative to change this condition.

Womenergy Association of Incubators in Manufacturing (WEAIM) is an association based in Hyderabad. They are trying to bring about change in the field of entrepreneurship through a gender-specific approach. It has succeeded in making women come forward to set up their own start-ups. Thereby helping women to be self-reliant and putting an end to the myths associated with start-ups.

Deepthi Reddy mentions that her own journey of beginning a start-up has encouraged her to take a gender-specific approach. She had to face many struggles for the first five years in her start-up journey. She mentioned that apart from general restrictions women have to face other troubles, especially in start-ups because it reveals her courage to take an independent stand.

Womenergy began its journey in 2015 specifically for women. It helps them in their journey be an entrepreneur by providing with the proper mentoring, strategy and funding for their start-ups. According to Deepthi, women should know how to begin a business and maintain it without fail. The start-up was initiated to equip women with this knowledge. It began with 40 to 50 women and now they are associating with 3000 to 4000 women.

Presently 20% of the total number of enterprises in India is owned by women. Most of these enterprises are single-person enterprises and employ almost 27 million people.

Several enterprises that are said to be owned by women are not run by them. Their name as the owner remains only on paperwork. There is several reasons, including financial and administrative complications, for this scenario.

Many women are very creative and would like to create things at home. Deepthi’s start-up tried to support their small but creative ideas initially. With proper support, the small start-ups that were initiated on small ideas grew into larger set-ups. Womenergy was able to turn many homemakers into entrepreneurs who were able to make a profit out of what they love to do.

Womenergy tries to empower women not only financially but also tries to make them ecologically conscious. They try to empower women to be aware of their social setup and their ecosystem thereby making them ambassadors of sustainable development. Deepthi aims to turn 1 lakh, women, into entrepreneurs who can manage their own business without assistance.