In India, Google has launched its first accelerator programme for women-led businesses. Its mission is to assist female-led entrepreneurs in scaling by connecting them with the proper mentors and a network of other startups, as well as assisting them in raising funding and hiring the best tech talent.
Every year, Google plans to pick 40 startups, divide them into two cohorts, and mentor each cohort for three months. The programme is open to startups that have raised a seed to series A round of funding and include a woman on the founding team.
“There’s a large women population with the ambition to truly build and design and influence society, but they’re not getting access to capital,” said Aditya Swamy, head of Google Play & Google for Startups.
Only 6% of the billions of dollars raised by Indian entrepreneurs went to women-led firms, according to Swamy. Only 1.5 percent of the funding was given to startups led solely by women.
“From a product point of view, if we have more women-founded companies, they will truly be able to solve the problems that women experience and that will make our society truly inclusive,” added Swamy.
There are three or four main themes that Google wishes to responsibly address through this accelerator, according to Paul Ravindranath G, programme manager, Developer Relations & Head of Google Accelerator at Google India.
One of them is access to mentors. Ravindranath G noted that 48% of women said that they didn’t necessarily have a great mentor. “Mentorship has been the backbone of our programs. And we’re trying to really build a strong mentor base and make sure that we are able to address the needs of women-led startups.”
The accelerator will also focus on solving the funding problem for these startups. Ravindranath G said, “We are looking at what can be done to enable these women founders to be better prepared to raise funds. It will include pitching, storytelling and providing them access to our community or network of investors.”
The other focus area of the accelerator is to give women founders access to a network of other women-led startups from India and other countries. “We have a global women founder network and we will make sure that the founders from India get plugged in and have the opportunity to get insights from them,” he added.
The programme will begin with an analysis, followed by an understanding of the startup's most pressing concerns. After that, they'll start a mentor matching process, after which the mentor and a Google team will focus on the woman entrepreneur and her startup's issues.
In addition, the programme will attempt to resolve their hiring issues. Many female founders have cited difficulty in hiring tech teams, finding a CTO, or developing a tech team that believes in their vision, according to Ravindranath G.
Workshops, tech architecture evaluations, and design and UX-related assistance are among the other benefits of the accelerator programme.
