Women Entrepreneurship Platform Partners With Urban Company To Empower Salon Owners

Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP) in collaboration with Urban Company has developed a program aimed at beauty salons and parlour women owners and managers. To make sure that women entrepreneurs in the beauty and wellness sectors are developed as a priority, training and mentorship coupled with necessary business resources are being used.

Key Features Of The Program

The focus of this government program is towards supporting women entrepreneurs to develop their businesses and establish sustainable sources of income.

Comprehensive Support:

Women entrepreneurs will be provided training in six critical areas:

• Skilling

• Legal and Compliance

• Access to finance

• Market Linkages

• Business development services

• Mentorship and Networking

Focus on Beauty and Wellness: The program has a specific focus on the beauty and wellness sector, which has over 100, 000, women MSMEs. As many as 25 women from the Delhi NCR region will be a part of the first cohort through the ongoing open application process.

Scalable Impact: The learnings from the pilot initiative will be utilised in creating templates for achieving scale across the country, thus moving more women into similar businesses throughout the nation.

Role Of WEP and Urban Company

The Women Entrepreneurship Platform was launched by NITI Aayog in 2018. Following the upgrade to a public-private partnership in 2022, this government program expanded and began collaborating with more than 20 public and private sector stakeholders towards putting in place an enabling environment for women entrepreneurs.

WEP Contribution:

• Serves as an aggregator platform connecting stakeholders from the government, business industry, philanthropy, and civil society.

• Creates platforms for interactions regarding the specifics of entrepreneurial requirements such as funding, training, and accessing markets.

Urban Company’s Role:

• Administers the program by locating women microentrepreneurs within the beauty sector and other integral parts.

• Offers the needy skills training together with business development assistance.

About the Award to Reward Initiative

The Award to Reward initiative by WEP launched in 2023 targets the ecosystem participants who have unmet needs and seeks to Bring Them Together As KO.

• Embed Programs: Focuses on the collaborative design of impactful upscaled programs through confident joint action.

• Support & Recognition: It recognizes the achievements of women's voices and entrepreneurs and guides how to even achieve more.

Expected Outcomes

This partnership aims to:

• Equip women salon owners with skills and resources to run their businesses independently.

• Gain access to new opportunities and improve your earnings.

• Increase profit and sustainability in the beauty and wellness industry.

• Back-up with more success than ever more than 30,000 women entrepreneurs who are already promoted through WEP.

Statement from NITI Aayog

Ms. Anna Roy, Principal Economic Adviser at NITI Aayog and Mission Director of WEP, emphasised the importance of empowering women entrepreneurs, stating:

"Supporting women entrepreneurs is vital to achieving women-led development. Our collaboration with Urban Company is a significant step toward creating a robust ecosystem for women in the beauty and wellness sector, enabling them to create more sustainable businesses."

Conclusion

WEP, together with Urban Company, has partnered with women entrepreneurs in the beauty and wellness industry within India. This initiative, which is backed by supportive mechanisms, will make the entrepreneurial journey of several women better, thus reaching effective women’s empowerment and women’s advancement.

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