New Delhi, January 12: With an aim to enhance community experience for women entrepreneurs in India, e-commerce marketplace Flipkart and NITI Aayog have joined hands to launch the revamped Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP). The WEP is a unified access portal which brings together women from parts of India to realise their entrepreneurial aspirations. Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Chief Executive Officer of the Flipkart Group, said MSMEs and start-ups have enabled the industry to better understand their challenges and needs.

The vision of the two partners- Flipkart and NITI Aayog is to make 'Community' a very interactive, rewarding and intuitive question and answer platform leveraging WEP resources. Through this, the entrepreneurs can utilise it for fruitful discussions and for sharing knowledge, ultimately benefiting the women entrepreneurs’ ecosystem in India.

Women entrepreneurs face unique obstacles, right from a lack of networking opportunities and mentors to the challenge of balancing work and family. When women come together or form communities, they are better equipped to tackle challenges that come their way, and shared experiences from mentors and professionals can further help them to take their passion and entrepreneurial ambition to new heights.

The idea of the platform was first mooted by NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant who announced the setting-up of a Women Entrepreneurship Platform at 8th Global Entrepreneurship Summit held in Hyderabad during 2017, with an overarching theme of 'Women First, Prosperity for All.'

Here’s all you need to know about Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP):

  1. The Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP) is a first of its kind, unified access portal.

  2. It aims to bring together women from different parts of India to realize their entrepreneurial aspirations.

  3. The revamped version will also include an additional feature to offer mentorship to the women mentees with specific knowledge concerning a problem area through a dedicated online mechanism facilitated under FICCI-FLO's empowering the Greater 50% mission, it added.

  4. The 'Community' on the WEP platform aims to connect women entrepreneurs seeking clarifications on aspects of setting up new businesses with those who have experience in setting up businesses and hence can contribute by solving queries.

  5. These include queries like registering businesses, GST, funding, effects of the pandemic, progressing already established businesses.

Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant hopes that the WEP will become a digital place for entrepreneurs to not only seek information and support, but also help each other out. He said the WEP will serve as a forum for people's voices to be heard - helping inform policies and programs to better suit the needs and requirements of people.

Meanwhile, Krishnamurthy said as a homegrown company, the constant and intense engagement with local Indian businesses, MSMEs and start-ups has enabled us to better understand their challenges and needs, adding that the WEP plays a critical role in uplifting and empowering women-led businesses in their growth ambition.