In the last decade, women entrepreneurship in India has witnessed a massive advancement, with many women joining the ranks of prominent startups. While innovators like Kiran Majumdar-Shaw remind us that nothing can stop them from pursuing their dreams, emerging unicorn entrepreneurs like Nykaa’s Falguni Nayar are carrying the trend forward, breaking all gender stereotypes. There are nearly 16 million women-led businesses in India (20% of total businesses in India). Women’s Entrepreneurship holds significant potential to accelerate the economic development of India. View PDF ..read more

After a successful launch of empoWer last year, earlier this September, Mumbai based Zone Startups India announced empoWer 2017 in partnership with Department of Science and Technology (Government of India), Social Alpha (an initiative by Tata Trusts),  Microsoft, Amazon Launchpad, ICICI Bank, PayU, CapitalFirst, Bureu de Quebec  and FlexiLoans.   After multi-city roadshows and an online campaign to attract applications, the program received 376 applications – almost double the number of applications received last year.    The empoWer 2017 cohort comprised of ..read more

  Pria Randolph, founder of Bitgram wrote a blog on scaling opportunities for startups. Bitgram is part of empoWer 2017’s cohort. Read on to know more.    One fine Friday morning in Mumbai, sipping hot chocolate and listening to Delna Avari’s talk on preparing my organization to Scale, I was inspired to write down a few things that I learnt from her session and from my own experiences over the past 15 years. Thank you Delna, you are always a big inspiration and thank you empoWer2017 who made this possible with the Women in Tech Bootcamp! You guys rock! Amidst the chaos and conun ..read more

1) About The Founder: Aardra Kannan Ambili is a Masters in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Georgia. She handles technology of the product. She has published papers on applied machine learning and natural language processing in international conferences on applications of artificial intelligence. She worked as an AI research scientist at DudeGenie, an IIT- Bombay startup in Bangalore, following which she worked in Yatra in their AI team.   About The Startup: Riot Solutions, Inc (https://www.raybaby.us/) is world’s first non-contact wellness and sleep tracker for babies that ..read more

Zone Startups India’s flagship initiative, empoWer is in its 2nd year, as an accelerator program. Launched in April 2016, the 1st cohort of the program was a huge success, with 8 of the cohort members going on to raise funding in excess of INR 150 crores, over the past year. The success of the 1st cohort, and its members vouching for the value-added takeaways was a validation for Zone Startups India to come up with the 2nd edition. empoWer 2017 was launched on 1st September 2017, in partnership with Department of Science and Technology (Government of India), Social Alpha (an initiative by Tat ..read more

Watch Shikha Uberoi, talk about how to enable smooth transition when it comes to changing careers. As a former sportsperson turned into an entrepreneur, she has a lot of insightful thoughts to share for budding entrepreneurs ..read more

During the launch event of empoWer2017 in Mumbai, we asked a couple of questions to Sonali Sinha. Read more to know what her insights are about women entrepreneurs in India. Sonali believes that women entrepreneurs need to be a bit more active when it comes to promoting and pitching their ideas. Along with that they need to be serious and believe in their startups to get the best from investors and funders. According to her empoWer as a platform is great for women entrepreneurs as they need support in their initial days of growth. Mentoring, financial guidance and networking are the few merit ..read more

Revathi Roy is a social entrepreneur who has been working towards empowering urban poor women since 2007 whether be it by pioneering Asia’s first all-women taxi service, Forsche or recently founding India’s first all-women instant parcel delivery service, Hey Deedee.In this interview with us, she talks about how government is supporting women entrepreneurs, her vision behind starting HeyDeeDee and what does she think about a platform like ours ..read more

In this candid chat with us, Naiyya talks about the challenges women entrepreneurs face, how at Babychakra she is trying to fill the gap and her advice to upcoming women entrepreneurs. Naiyya Saggi, Founder & CEO, Babychakra was a speaker at #empoWer17 Mumbai Launch Conference. Applications are live for the 2017 cohort at http://empower.zone ..read more

Chetna Sinha, President, Mann Deshi Foundation was a speaker at #empoWer17 Mumbai Launch Conference, inspiring the audience with her learnings from starting up and scaling Vu technologies to a 500 Crore Company. In this candid chat with Hardik Vaidya, Devita talks about the challenges she faced while starting up, her piece of advice to budding entrepreneurs and her views on support platforms like empoWer. Application to 2017 edition of empoWer – India’s first tech accelerator for women entrepreneurs is open. Apply here – http://empower.zone/applynow ..read more