Rupa Aurangabadkar, the owner of Hyderabad-based design house Colourquill, was in a quandary. She wanted to show some patrons how to make murals on walls. Though an expert in design, the self-professed interior stylist did not know how to reach a wider audience.

“Making murals is a unique thing. I wanted to create a video of every step, right from the paper work, assembling it, to the actual mural on the wall,” she said.

Scouting for an opportunity to put her work up for the world, she chanced upon Google’s Women Entrepreneurs on the Web programme, a business diversity programme for women entrepreneurs. Rupa is now working on a series of digital videos that will showcase each step of creating a mural and beam it to the whole world.

Google’s efforts to get women entrepreneurs on the Web appears to have caught the fancy of several housewives like Archana Doshi from Bangalore, who has made a business out of a simple blog, sharing the recipes of her mother to a wider audience. Meghana Musunuri, who opened the Fountainhead School in Hyderabad, needed guidance on how to use the Web to broaden her business and her education mission. A similar situation arose for Dr Evita from Fernandez Hospital in Hyderabad. “Getting online and being in touch makes a lot of difference to your work at the hospital. For, one can reach out to several people and put the services that you offer on the web,” she said.

These women are among the 2,000 women entrepreneurs who have signed up for Google’s programme.

A study conducted by Google India last year revealed that a large number of women entrepreneurs did not have an online presence, and were completely unaware of various products and services that could be used to leverage the full potential of the Internet. This led the company to crystallise the idea into a programme to increase the reach of technology with this community.

As Keerthana Mohan, Diversity Manager, Google India, told Business Line , “India has one of the largest numbers of women entrepreneurs across the world, at around 1.3 million, which makes it a perfect place for us to pilot the initiative.”

Aimed at providing a springboard for women entrepreneurs, the initiative was started as a pilot in India last year. Workshops are conducted to drive home the point that e-commerce has the potential to provide Indian businesswomen a flexible platform to overcome traditional male-dominated boundaries, and explore business prospects beyond conventional channels.

> amritanair.ghaswalla@thehindu.co.in

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