Startup India: Women encouraged to take up entrepreneurship as a career

VARANASI: Under the Women for Start-ups campaign of Startup India Initiative, a workshop was organised at Atal Incubation Center in Banaras Hindu University (BHU) here on Friday.About 50 existing and aspiring women entrepreneurs participated in the workshop.Startup India is a flagship initiative of the central government, aimed at catalysing the startup culture and building a strong and inclusive ecosystem for innovation and entrepreneurship in the country.Under this initiative, Start-up India Team is promoting women entrepreneurship through Women for Start-ups campaign, under which a workshop is organised for existing and aspiring women entrepreneurs for their capacity building and making them familiar with the start-up ecosystem as well as various aspects of entrepreneurial journey.In the first session, Atal Incubation Center CEO in-charge Prashant Ranjan gave a brief overview of Uttar Pradesh Start-up Policy-2020 and explained the offerings of the center. Shambhavi Sharma and Suyash Ratna Tripathi from the Start-up India Team took a session on Start-up India Scheme, DPIIT recognition for start-ups and tax exemption benefits. Participants were also apprised about the process of registration on the Start-up India portal and how they can take benefits of various exemptions under the scheme.An entrepreneurial journey session was held by Tripti Verma, Chief Operating Officer at Study at Home to motivate participants to take up entrepreneurship as a career.She shared the story of starting her venture and the challenges faced during her journey. She also emphasized on the importance of developing communication skills and storytelling to the participants. Saikat Sen, chief operating officer of SATHI-DST lab at BHU interacted with the participants through a capacity building session on entrepreneurship.It was followed by sessions on the fundraising process and investor psychology by Soumya Khurana and Rahul Narvekar, the founders of WYN Studios and India Network, respectively. A mock pitching session was also conducted for selected start-up founders, where they pitched their start-ups to the panel and received the feedback from them.