IIT-Madras to train 1000 women entrepreneurs

IIT-Madras will partner  Hand-in-Hand India, a public charitable trust based in Kancheepuram working in eight  states across India to empower women from the most marginalised population groups, for the programme. 

Faculty members from the Department of Management Studies at IIT and experts from the industry will conduct the programme with Tamil as the medium of instruction.

As part of the programme, a weeklong  workshop will be conducted from January 4 to 8 at Kancheepuram and  focus on achieving business growth and profitability. 

About the need for the programme, Prof. A. Thillai Rajan, one of the programme directors from IIT, said that several entrepreneurs who start and run micro enterprises lack formal training in running a business. 

“While most of them have some degree of domain experience in the areas in which they operate, business skills and knowledge is mostly self-learnt. Through this programme, it is our desire to make modern management insights and knowledge easily accessible to these marginal 

entrepreneurs,” he said. The women entrepreneurs will get help from mentors for about six months after completion of the programme. The mentors would guide the participants in developing a business plan, and entrepreneurs with the best business plans would get an opportunity for financial support. The mentoring process would be co-ordinated by Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CSIE) at IIT. 

Prof. Saji Mathew, another director of the programme said that the idea was to train the participants in various entrepreneurial skills.  “We would create awareness of the financing options that are available for their activities, help them to appraise the demand for  products, educate them on the innovations and changes that they could bring in on the product or service to increase the marketability and standardisation,” he added. 

This programme is supported by the Socially Relevant Projects (SRP) programme of IIT. The SRP programme, which started in the year 2003, with an initial grant from IIT, has in the last couple of years, funded about five new projects under the SRP scheme every year.