Source: PIB & NITI Aayog
Recently The NITI Aayog has launched the Fourth Edition of Women Transforming India (WTI) Awards.
The theme of 2019: This year’s theme is ‘Women and Entrepreneurship’, in continuation of the theme for WTI Awards 2018.
About Women Transforming India (WTI) Awards
- Women Transforming India (WTI) Awards is one of the flagship events of NITI Aayog, launched in 2016 as an online contest.
- It is being organized in collaboration with the United Nations to recognize women entrepreneurs from across India.
- The idea behind WTI Awards is to award and showcase exceptional women entrepreneurs who have broken the glass ceiling and have challenged stereotypes through businesses, enterprises, and initiatives that provide innovative solutions to address key development challenges and/or impact communities.
- The campaign recognizes women, who are flag bearers of the next wave of innovations and aims to connect them with potential business opportunities, through NITI Aayog’s Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP), a unified access portal to help women realize their entrepreneurial aspirations.
About Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP)
- WEP is a Government of India initiative by NITI Aayog to promote and support aspiring as well as established women entrepreneurs in India, assist and handhold them in their journey from starting to scaling up and expanding their ventures.
- The idea of setting up a Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP) to promote and support established as well as aspiring women entrepreneurs in India took seed at the 8th Annual Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) 2017 held in Hyderabad, jointly by NITI Aayog in partnership with the Government of the United States of America.
- The platform was formally launched on 8 March 2018, on the occasion of International Women’s Day by Hon’ble Prime Minister of India.
- It is the first of its kind facilitation platform which is mandated to work in collaboration with the public as well as private sector organizations and bring them on a single platform by listing their women-focused entrepreneurship schemes, initiatives, and programmes on WEP website.
- It also enables the sharing of best practices amongst women entrepreneurs and partner organizations and promotes evidence-based policymaking.
- WEP support areas: WEP, through its partners, tends to offer services to members under various support areas:
- Incubation and Acceleration
- Entrepreneurship Skilling
- Marketing Assistance,
- Funding and Financial Assistance
- Compliances Support
- Social Entrepreneurship
- WEP Partners: WEP has more than 30 partners from various industries and sectors and has signed Statement of Intent (SoI) with many of those who have committed specific deliverables towards WEP users. These partners include Atal Innovation Mission, CRISIL, SIDBI, FICCI, NASSCOM, Google, Facebook, Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, Institute of Company Secretaries of India, CII, WEE Foundation, Nexus Incubator, MannDeshi Foundation, ShopClues, SEWA Bank amongst others.
- WEP New Platform: WEP launched its highly evolved AI/ML-based Version 2.0 of the online platform in the month of December 2018 by adding an additional layer of ‘Mapping’ to the platform through which information, schemes, programmes, events, courses, news, etc. will be shown to the user, based entirely on the chosen area of interest. This feature available on the WEP portal would greatly improve user experience and help in giving greater exposure to existing initiatives in this ecosystem
