Developing mentors across India
Following our commitment made at the 2010 Women Mean Business Conference to increase support for women-led and owned small and medium-sized enterprises in India, we have teamed up with the National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN) to develop a group of 60 highly effective, accessible mentors across India.
The goal is to support more than 1,000 women entrepreneurs in 12 urban areas and to ensure on-going support for women entrepreneurs by extending the network of mentors to include previous beneficiaries.
Why mentoring support?
The need for mentoring and business development support is critical in a country like India, where women make up only 3% of senior management positions and no more than 11% of all small and medium-sized enterprises are run or owned by women.
Mentors are selected from a pool of over 1200 NEN entrepreneurship faculty members who have been actively engaged in running entrepreneurial programmes. Their role is to act as a sounding board and offer high-quality business development support and tangible resources to women entrepreneurs lacking the confidence, business skills and networks to start and grow their venture.
The ultimate objective is to increase the number of successful women entrepreneurs in India, who are growing businesses that create wealth and much-needed jobs.
.JPG)
