NITI Aayog and Flipkart joined hands to improve Women Entrepreneurship Platform

NITI Aayog and Flipkart, India’s homegrown e-commerce marketplace have joined together to launch the revamped Women Entrepreneurship Platform, as an effort to boost the community experience for women entrepreneurs in India.

Being a first of its kind, the Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP) unified access portal which gather women from different parts of India together to realize their entrepreneurial aspirations. The renovated version shall also include an additional feature to offer mentorship to the women mentees with specific knowledge concerning a problem area through a dedicated online mechanism facilitated under FICCI-FLO’s Empowering the Greater 50% mission.

The person who claimed idea of the platform for the first time was Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog who announced the setting-up of a Women Entrepreneurship Platform in NITI Aayog, while concluding the 8th Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) held in Hyderabad in 2017, with an overarching theme of ‘Women first, prosperity for all’.

Today, women entrepreneurs face unique obstacles, from a lack of networking opportunities and mentors to the challenge of balancing work and family. When women come together and create communities, coming over the challenges that come their way will be more eased and simplified. Moreover, shared experiences from mentors and professionals help them figure out that a support system is close at hand to take their passion and entrepreneurial ambition to new heights.

Keeping it as a primary goal, NITI Aayog and Flipkart both together bring forth the strength of technology and user experience to the foreground to enable ‘Community’ interaction and engagement for women entrepreneurs on the platform. The vision is to make the ‘Community’ a very interactive, rewarding and intuitive QnA platform, leveraging WEP resources, so that entrepreneurs can utilize it for advantageous discussions and for sharing knowledge, ultimately benefiting the women entrepreneurs ecosystem in India.

The aim of ‘Community’ on the WEP platform is to connect knowledge-seeking women entrepreneurs, who have queries or look for clarifications on various facet of starting new businesses (like registering businesses, GST, funding, effects of the pandemic, etc.), or progressing already established businesses; to knowledge providing women entrepreneurs who have experience in setting up businesses and hence can contribute by solving queries.

Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog, said, “It is my hope that WEP will become a digital place for entrepreneurs to not only seek information and support, but also help each other out. Serving as a forum for people's voices to be heard - helping inform policies and programs to better suit the needs and requirements of people."

Kalyan Krishnamurthy, CEO, Flipkart Group, said, “At Flipkart, we have technology and innovation at the core of all that we do. As a homegrown company, our constant and intense engagement with local Indian businesses, MSMEs and start-ups has enabled us to better understand their challenges and needs. Today, we can power their ambition with locally developed technology by providing them access to a large consumer market and bring our strengths to benefit their experiences.The Women Entrepreneurship Platform plays a critical role in uplifting and empowering women-led businesses in their growth ambition and we are privileged to partner with NITI Aayog in enabling their journey to success.”

Dr. Sangita Reddy Immediate Past President FICCI, said, “FICCI – FLO Empowering Greater 50% programme lays a special emphasis on enhancing entrepreneurial and decision-making skills of existing and aspiring women entrepreneurs through need-based Mentorship programmes and Mentor-Mentee matchmaking. NITI’s Women Entrepreneurship Platform has been successfully bringing together women from different parts of India under one community and Greater 50’s collaboration with this unified access platform is a significant step to help women across India unlock new business opportunities and realize their entrepreneurial aspirations. We value this partnership. We will make every effort to give more power to the women of India to be the best form of themselves and contribute to a women-led development of the country as a whole.”

Now the ‘Community’ page on the platform has a revamped homepage and login option, simplified by making the login form more intuitive and accessible through Google and Facebook as well. The platform will also be available in multiple regional languages, aligned with the #VocalForLocal initiative, allowing women to interact with fellow women entrepreneurs and mentors to communicate in their language of choice.

The ‘Community’ page has been designed for both desktop and mobile; it is in an all-new avatar and is now transformed into a QnA portal so that both knowledge seekers and knowledge providers can comfortably interact and engage.

Besides, knowledge seekers and contributors can gift badges to each other as a token of appreciation for solving their queries or being a consistent source of information and support on the platform.

The revamped portal will encourage entrepreneurs to share their entrepreneurial journeys, stories and experiences to foster mutual learning. WEP platform, as a driver of change, continues to also promote offline initiatives and improve programs to promote entrepreneurial spirit among potential women entrepreneurs. In this process, FICCI will support NITI Aayog and WEP to lay special emphasis on enhancing entrepreneurial and decision-making skills of women - based on mentorship programs and mentor-mentee matchmaking. The endeavor of this partnership will give more power to women and enable a suitable ecosystem for their empowerment.