Comments
Inspired by the huge success of the women-driven Kudumbashree initiative, Kerala, more than half of whose population is female, has launched a mission to kindle the entrepreneurial skill of rural women.
The Women Entrepreneur Mission (WE Mission) of the Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation aims to create a generation of women entrepreneurs in the micro-and-small enterprises sector. It was formally launched in Malappuram on Friday.
Change of mindset Though well-educated, Kerala women had until recently been reluctant to venture into the entrepreneurial field and set up their own enterprises. But, things have changed in the recent past.
“The Kudumbashree experiment showed that there is a lot of entrepreneurial talent in rural women,” B Jyothikumar, Executive Director of KSIDC, told Business Line . “KSIDC responds to the changing times and we realise that now is the time to give a boost to the rural women entrepreneurs.”
(Kudumbashree is a women-empowerment programme that promotes micro-entrepreneurial activities of women self-help groups).
Jyothikumar noted that Kudumbashree had made a huge positive impact on women and a large number of women, both urban and rural, are now keen to set up their own little enterprises so that they could be on their own.
“We opted for the mission mode as it will give focussed attention to the task,” Jyothikumar said. “We aim to focus on scaling up the entrepreneurial talents and enterprises.”
5 strategies For this, the mission has lined up five strategies: ‘Meet your Mentor’ by offering continuous mentoring by successful women entrepreneurs; ‘See to Feel’ by taking women on regular exposure visits; ‘Source the Fund’ for easier funding; ‘Launch the Venture’ for incubation and infrastructure support and ‘Market Connect’ for networking for marketing.
KSIDC will also create a financial package for supporting the micro units entrepreneur-friendly terms.
KSIDC’s pro-startup strategy has paid off well by attracting more young people with technology background to entrepreneurship.
The Young Entrepreneur Summit organised last year was a hit. Jyothikumar hopes the WE will also turn out to be a model initiative.
Comments
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.