Imported item 64

I grew up in a small town in Uttar Pradesh in a household where women happily accepted their roles as homemakers. They never knew that there was a world beyond the four walls of their homes.

I had the advantage of being one of the first girl children to study in a boarding school,  and the only one to go to Harvard University to date. Good education made me aware of the unequal status of women in our society.

That fuelled in me a desire to do something beyond myself. I started my career as an entrepreneur. I enjoyed the work, but I always wanted to stretch myself to do something that added meaning to my life. The first and most obvious step in this direction was intervening to help the education of my domestic help’s children.

Their academic success piqued my interest,  one thing led to another, and one day, I hung my boots and stepped out of the corporate world to start a school for slum kids in Kathmandu, Nepal.

This journey of being a social entrepreneur-led to a plethora of questions. I was satisfied with our work but felt that we were only addressing the symptoms of a problem. To find answers to my questions, I took a sabbatical and went to Harvard for a Master’s program in Public Administration.

Post that, I moved back to India with colossal dreams of creating impact and change. I forayed into the education space again, and my experiences of being a social entrepreneur had firmly established the enormity of the struggle of being one. I realized that women constantly need to prove their worth to be taken seriously. I felt the lack of a community and support structure where I  could share my ideas, challenges, wins, and failures. I had very few like-minded people working with me, making the journey lonely. I realized that being a woman entrepreneur is not easy but being a  woman in social entrepreneurship was an added layer of difficulty.

The female labour participation rate in India is a dwindling number. It has fallen from about 30% in 1990 to a mere 20.3% in 2018.

In the entrepreneurship segment, the situation was worse. According to the Sixth Economic Census released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, women constitute around 14% of the total entrepreneur base in India i.e. 8.05 million out of 58.5 million entrepreneurs. Most of them give up in the first three years due to several socio-economic-support-skill issues.

I conceptualized STEP (Shakti- The Empathy Project), an incubation program, with a quest to build a community of women entrepreneurs. 

“Shakti” is a combination of power and feminine values, and that is what we stand for. As the name suggests, it has empathy at its heart. I aimed to provide the women entrepreneurs with the necessary skills and resources to run an enterprise for social good and build a safe and empathetic ecosystem to create a snowball effect that will increase female participation in entrepreneurship and the workforce.

The program launched in 2019 rests on five pillars: a supportive community, capacity building, mentorship, role modelling, and networking & funding opportunities. At STEP, we provide an alternate support system. We connect early-stage entrepreneurs with mentors to support them in their journey and conduct capacity-building sessions that help them in their entrepreneurial growth. We create networking opportunities and hold candid conversations with successful women entrepreneurs and other ecosystem enablers.

STEP runs six programs under its umbrella-Two pre-incubation & incubation programs in English & Hindi, WINGS Program, and the WINGS challenge. The programs focus on building a cohesive community of like-minded women through regular learning sessions and networking through discussions and dialogues with experts from the ecosystem.

Mentorship is at the heart of our program.STEP considers connecting the startups with suitable mentors as an utmost priority and pairs the mentor and mentees based either on sector alignment or the strategic need of the startup. Currently, 75% of our mentor pool consists of women. 

STEP is a safe space to connect, collaborate and exchange ideas with other women entrepreneurs in the cohort and the larger STEP Community. 

We are proud to share that 48 successful entrepreneurs have graduated from STEP programs and have raised Rs. 25Cr in follow-on funding. Through our work, we have touched 700,000 lives.

Gender balance in the economic ecosystem is essential as the country’s GDP could increase anywhere between 16-60% depending on the number of women in the workforce.

We envision an India where women entrepreneurs are empowered and aim to support 100000 women entrepreneurs over the next ten years.

 Let your inner Shakti rise, and do not give up on your dreams. If you are looking for a safe and robust community of women, be a part of the STEP community.