Hyderabad: A Hyderabad based women association, WEAIM is influencing and helping thousands of women to come forward and establish their own small scale start-ups and to be self-reliant.
Womenergy Association of Incubators in Manufacturing (WEAIM), aims to bring a change by the gender-specific approach in the field of start-ups. Through this association, Deepthi Reddy, the director of WEAIM has been able to influence thousands of women to come forward and establish their own small scale start-ups. Through this, they aim to achieve women empowerment and break the myths of startups.
While speaking to ANI, the director of WEAIM, Deepthi Reddy, said “Being an entrepreneur myself, I have faced my start-up journey struggles for the initial 5 years. During that time, I have realised and observed that there is a gender-specific approach need when we talk about start-ups. And women especially have to face a lot in the initial stages for their idea to take a stand.”
She said, “In 2015 we have set up this idea of ‘Womenergy’ to provide a platform for the women to gain proper strategy, funding, and mentoring for their start-ups. And it is necessary for women to understand how to start a business and maintain it in a proper way. Sharing this idea, we have formed a group of 40 to 50 women back then and now we are an association for about 3,000 to 4,000 women.”
Deepthi further mentioned that “With this association, we are able to influence and change home-making women into entrepreneurs. There are women”>women who are able to make a living out of their ideas. We are able to influence women and turn them into marginal scale business persons. This was to bring not just economic but also social and ecological awareness among women. Through this association, we are able to break the myth that start-ups are only related to technology. We have made various women who are homemakers to come forward and create a very sustainable ecosystem.”
“Nearly half of the population of India are women and our contribution to National Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is less than 17 per cent, so we aimed to change this and we have come up with this association exclusively for women manufacturers,” she said.
“Lot of women have various ideas and want to make things at home, so we try to provide them with a platform for them. So when these small ideas are given support, they become large setups in coming days,” she added.
Deepthi’s aim is to bring at least one lakh women entrepreneurs to come forward and set up their own business.