“UBUNTU aims to strengthen the entrepreneurial ecosystem for women and work towards developing an Xcelerator model – a growth accelerator for small businesses
Bengaluru, January 12, 2020: As has been widely researched, women entrepreneurship in India is languishing at the sub – 15%. This situation calls for a renewed initiative to catalyze women entrepreneurship with two objectives – one, increasing the number of women entrepreneurs scaling up through the support of aligned ecosystem stakeholders, and two, enabling role models to inspire entrepreneurs to start their entrepreneurial journeys. To amplify entrepreneurial dynamism and enable a conducive women entrepreneurship ecosystem in India, the Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME) and Ubuntu, a Consortium of Women Entrepreneur’s Association have entered a MoU to support the growth of women entrepreneurship. With the onset of COVID, where 70% of women entrepreneurs have been negatively impacted and almost 20% of them witnessing the revenue of their businesses nearly wiped out, this is a timely initiative.
GAME is implementing a growth accelerator model called the Xcelerator, inspired by a similar program pioneered by Prof Daniel Isenberg of Harvard University. In Phase 1, Ubuntu will provide ecosystem support for GAME’s Xcelerator programme in Bengaluru, the “Xcelerator Bengaluru” program. In Phase 2, GAME and Ubuntu will expand the Xcelerator activities to cover more districts in Karnataka. Xcelerator Bangalore is growth-focused accelerator program supporting up to 25 women-owned growth businesses every six months in Bengaluru to enable quick growth among select small businesses through a combination of formal learning programs, mentoring, expert sessions, and peer learning, in the areas of 3 Cs – Customers, Cash and Capacity Further, ecosystem stakeholders will be encouraged to be involved in the growth journeys of these entrepreneurs.
Gracing the MoU signage, Shri Jagadish Shettar, Minister of Large and Medium Scale Industries, Karnataka said, “In India, women entrepreneurs have a potential to create transformational employment and generate 150–170 million jobs. Thus, it is important to empower them and support them. Together with the support of platforms like GAME and UBUNTU, we aim at making available the infrastructure and strengthening the entrepreneurial ecosystem to help women sustain and scale their businesses.”
Under this partnership, UBUNTU will galvanize stakeholders in the ecosystem such as Government departments, financial institutions, and skills institutions to align with the mission and create a more supportive ecosystem for women entrepreneurship. Ubuntu will also nominate a few successful entrepreneurs to participate in “Xcelerator Bengaluru” as mentors and volunteers, to inspire and motivate women entrepreneurs in the Xcelerator Bengaluru cohort.
“While women entrepreneurs face formidable challenges, the combination of new market platforms, peer-support networks, and role models, will make women entrepreneurs a force to reckon with before the end of the decade. GAME envisages that enabling women to establish and sustain entrepreneurial ventures is critical to the growth of mass entrepreneurship and this MoU is a small step towards it”, said, Madan Padaki, Co-Founder, GAME.
“At Ubuntu, our objective is to provide a platform for the growth of women entrepreneurs with the capacity building of women entrepreneurs association/chambers to help their members to strengthen entrepreneurs to scale up their business. Partnership with GAME has opened more avenues for us through their various ongoing projects to strengthen women entrepreneurs. We look forward to some collaborative work and a sustained partnership,” said K Ratnaprabha, Founder & President, UBUNTU, and Former Chief Secretary, Government of Karnataka.
About GAME:
GAME is a project under Junior Achievement India Services, a non-profit, Sec 8 Company based in Bangalore, India. GAME envisages a thriving ecosystem that will enable potential and existing entrepreneurs to explore, test, experiment, establish and grow their entrepreneurial initiatives. GAME was founded in 2018 by Ravi Venkatesan (former Chairman – Microsoft India & Bank of Baroda, and UNICEF Special Representative for Young People), Madan Padaki (Special Advisor, UNICEF India) and Mekin Maheshwari (former CPO, Flipkart). GAME intends to build a movement for creating and sustaining 10 million job-creating ‘mass entrepreneurs’, half of whom will be women leading to 50 million jobs.
About UBUNTU:
UBUNTU is a Consortium of Women Entrepreneur’s Association which is a platform to bring all women entrepreneur’s organisations under one umbrella and to make their business successful thus contributing to the economy of the nation. UBUNTU Consortium was formed under the able Presidentship of Mrs. Ratnaprabha, (Former Chief Secretary Govt of Karnataka). UBUNTU’s 7 other Founding members (individuals), who have vast experience in entrepreneurship, running successful business ventures & heading various Industry Associations, devote their valuable time to the vision of the organisation purely on a voluntary basis. Ubuntu’s Association members are Women Entrepreneur organisations from across INDIA in the field of Trade & Industry. It is a not-for-profit organisation registered under the Societies Act. Ubuntu’s objective is to provide a platform for the growth of Women Entrepreneurs with capacity building of Women Entrepreneurs Association/ chambers to help their members to strengthen Entrepreneurs to scale up their business. Ubuntu desires that the ecosystem adopt the women friendly policies & to enhance and strengthen the associations by Business networking and helping them in facilitating Trade opportunities global level for the associations.
Source: Business World
