TheCSRUniverse brings to you a closer look at an initiative where social impact and entrepreneurship intersect. Villgro, a prominent social enterprise incubator in India, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) India have joined hands to introduce 'EMPOWER Her Journey.' This transformative program seeks to empower women-led businesses by addressing critical challenges and amplifying their potential through financial support and digital tools.
The backdrop for this partnership is the recognition of the vital role women entrepreneurs play in shaping India's economic landscape. However, they often encounter hurdles like cultural constraints, lack of access to networks, and mentors. 'EMPOWER Her Journey' adopts a holistic approach, offering peer-to-peer learning, comprehensive training, networking opportunities, and dedicated mentorship. It also places a significant emphasis on equipping these entrepreneurs with digital prowess to amplify their businesses and provides strategies for sustainable growth.
As we delve into two insightful interviews, TheCSRUniverse presents Ms. Kalyani Krishna, Manager of Diversity and Inclusion, Villgro, who shares her insights into the program's strategies, impact on women entrepreneurs, and the path to success. Additionally, Ms. Isabelle Tschan, Deputy Resident Representative, UNDP in India, provides a broader perspective on India's socio-economic landscape, long-term impact measurement, the strategic significance of this partnership, and its potential for sustainability and replication.
Explore these enlightening dialogues below to discover how this collaboration is making strides toward gender equality and women's economic empowerment in India, aligning with the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Interview 1
Organisation: Villgro
Spokesperson: Ms. Kalyani Krishna, Manager, Diversity and Inclusion
Q. Could you provide examples of specific cultural constraints and obstacles that women entrepreneurs in India typically face, and how EMPOWER Her Journey program plans to address these challenges effectively?
A. Challenges faced by women:
○ Handling household chores while pursuing a passionate business
○ Societal constraints in travelling for training purposes
○ Lack of exposure leading to a lack of awareness
● EMPOWER program aims to provide Business skills & digital knowledge to women entrepreneurs, in the comfort of their homes and provide them with the practical knowledge needed for running a business & scaling an existing business.
Q. With a focus on digital tools and technology, how will the program enable women of varying technological literacy to effectively expand their market reach?
A. The course will equip women on the digital tools needed to run a business & the tools needed to market their business as well. The facilitators chosen (majority women as well) are experts in the respective fields who will give them practical inputs to use these tools. The tools elaborated on are also sector agnostic such that it can be extended to any business at any stage.
Q. Could you elaborate on the structure of the mentorship component? How will mentors be selected, and what strategies will be employed to match them effectively with women-led startups based on their industry and needs? And which geographies are you looking at?
A. Mentors will selected depending on their expertise in the field of business transformation and digital transformation. The mentors will be common for all the women-led enterprises and the program is pan-India.
Q. Regarding business acceleration strategies, how will the program customize its approaches to suit startups at various stages of development, from ideation to pre-revenue and revenue-generating phases? Also, how will you support women-led businesses in resource-constrained remote areas?
A. The training is on business development & digital tools women running businesses can use for their day-to-day business. We have recommended that the entrepreneurs participating need to be running a business for less than 5 years.
Q. How will the program organize peer-to-peer learning and networking for meaningful knowledge exchange? How do past successes like TVARAN Accelerator and Powering Livelihoods influence the current program's design and approach?
A. The peer-peer learning for the program will include:
○ Interactions/group work during facilitator-led sessions
○ Avenues in the LMS for posting discussion questions & opinions
● Programs like TVARAN were women-specific programs for improving access to markets to commercialize and scale their products. Therefore the emphasis was more on making introductions.
● Powering Livelihoods is focussed on increasing the adoption of DRE-based livelihood-generating innovations. There we focussed on doing melas - what we called trade activation events - to bring together women collectives, financial partners, rural distributors, sales partners & innovators.
Q. Will the program track both economic and qualitative indicators for impact measurement? If so, how will it capture nuanced outcomes related to social empowerment and community involvement?
A. The program will only track how the women are using the learnings and skill sets acquired from the program into their business. This will tracked through online assessments and feedback surveys.
Q. Considering the timeline and urgency of addressing gender disparity, how will the program ensure scalability and sustainability beyond the initial cohort of 100 startups? Are there plans to expand the program's reach and impact in the coming years?
A. The program is aimed to train 1600 women entrepreneurs in the next 2.5 years. We will be partnering with on-ground institutions & NGOs focussing on women entrepreneurship to onboard more such women entrepreneurs.
Interview 2
Organisation : UNDP
Spokesperson: Ms. Isabelle Tschan, Deputy Resident Representative, UNDP in India
Q. How do you perceive the distinctive socio-economic landscape of India, including its challenges and opportunities? In your opinion, where do you see potential areas for improvement for women entrepreneurship in the country?
A. India's socio-economic landscape is characterized by a predominantly young and diverse population. While India stands tall as one of the world’s leading economies, challenges related to socio-economic and gender inequality remain. Globally, women are more vulnerable and less able to emerge from poverty because of their misplaced social status, mobility barriers and limited economic opportunities. In India, most women work in the informal sector and female workforce participation is low.
As UNDP, our mandate is to lift people out of poverty and work with the government on fulfilling the Sustainable Development Goals.
Our work focuses on:
1) Strengthening women’s agency through improved access to skilling, gainful employment and entrepreneurship;
2) Creating an enabling ecosystem for women belonging from regions with the low human development indicators;
Thanks to transformative government initiatives such as the National Rural Livelihoods Mission, Atal Innovation Mission and Startup India, India is the world's third-largest startup ecosystem. Yet, only 20% of enterprises are women-owned. Also, women-led businesses have been severely affected by the pandemic, and recovery has been slow.
UNDP India provides women quality business management support through funded startup challenges, entrepreneurship springboard programmes as well as trainings – both directly and through grassroot organizations. We also offer mentorship and business support to scale up enterprises to become sustainable and profitable. In the past five years, UNDP has helped establish and scale up over 52,000 enterprises across India – nearly half are women-owned. This has created more jobs and lifted people out of poverty.
Q. How does UNDP envision measuring the long-term impact of the 'EMPOWER Her Journey' initiative in fostering gender equality and women's economic empowerment within India's entrepreneurial ecosystem?
A. Several existing programmes in India offer foundational support to women to help them establish micro enterprises. However, research shows that sustaining an enterprise through the choppy initial years is the tougher challenge because they run a high risk of shutting down due to poor credit access, changing market trends or a lack of technical knowledge.
The targeted digital transformation programme that we are offering will support these enterprises on sustainability in the long run.
‘EMPOWER Her Journey’, a four-week virtual journey administered by UNDP-certified trainers, aims to fill that gap by providing support to 1,600 small-scale women entrepreneurs with 0-5 years of experience, in tier cities across India. The course curriculum and training on business and digital transformation will inspire women entrepreneurs to scale and employ more women, creating a ripple effect. The programme also builds strong women networks that foster long-term peer support.
We aim to measure impact by conducting module assessments, baseline and endline surveys, to measure the extent of entrepreneurial and digital skills learned during training. Apart from evaluating business metrics like turnover, revenue, profit and impact of digital marketing, made by women-led businesses, we will also conduct interviews and focus group discussions to assess self-confidence and perceptions about workplace safety and inclusion.
Q. What makes this partnership strategic and how does it align with UNDP’s commitment to SDGs, particularly towards women’s empowerment?
A. Villgro has been working in the business incubation space for the past 22 years. In the last three years they have pivoted to ensuring gender inclusion cuts across all their thematic areas. They link grassroots entrepreneurs with access to markets, finance and new age skills across sectors such as climate action, healthcare, agriculture and more.
As UNDP, we bring a long-standing experience of working on social inclusion and diversity and we support the government efforts in achieving the SDGs and working with the most vulnerable. We work to leave no one behind.
We work on women’s empowerment through SDG 1, 5, and 8 (No poverty, Gender Equality, and Decent work and Economic Growth). Owing to the social, cultural, and ideological barriers for women, the conditions that support men and women entrepreneurs are not the same – gendered differences in access to education, capital and networks remain prevalent. Hence, programmes like Empower Her Journey are critical to enable women entrepreneurs to break financial barriers and become empowered.
Our mutual commitment to promoting women’s economic empowerment through innovation and women’s entrepreneurship is what makes this partnership strategic.
Q. How do you envision ensuring the sustainability and replicability of this partnership's impact, particularly in fostering gender equality and women's economic empowerment in India?
A. The programme aligns with the Government of India's digital vision, Start-Up India, and G20 discussions on women-led development. A priority area for the government, it is well-suited for scaling up with public sector support. UNDP is collaborating with key government partners, including Niti Aayog, Atal Innovation Mission, and National Urban Livelihoods Mission, to amplify the programme's impact. UNDP will also partner with media outlets to broaden outreach, aiming to reach more women and partners across India. Our 21st-century skills curriculum for youth and our Biz Sakhi model – where women act as business mentors providing women entrepreneurs with psycho-social support – are already in the public domain and have been adopted by other organizations, facilitating widespread replication of our efforts.
