IIT-Delhi, WEE to help women set up start-ups

Seema Kaul

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, September 24

Forty-five women entrepreneurs will be trained to work on their start-ups under the Women Entrepreneurship and Empowerment Programme initiated by the WEE Foundation and IIT-Delhi.

Earlier, it was decided to select 30 women, but the programme received a good response and 45 women have made the cut in the list. The WEE Foundation has started identifying mentors and investors for the 45 women and the first session is scheduled for next week. 

The WEE programme, focusing on start-ups, will help the women to network and scale up their ideas and develop realistic business plans. 

“One of the selected women, Dr Swati Middha, has developed a printing technology for 3-dimensional constructs of a human body to help patients requiring tissue replacements; Aparna Mishra, a plastics engineer, runs a plastic injection moulding plant to make fan canopies and paint containers and Elsa Marie D’Silva runs a safe city application,” said Sarandeep Singh, CEO of WEE Foundation.

“I think there is a goldmine in bee-keeping. There are many products such as royal jelly (honeybee secretion), propolis (bee glue), bee pollen and bee venom which can give much higher returns than honey. Honey gives around Rs 80 per kg while royal jelly can sell at up to Rs 1 lakh per kg in international market,” said Kanupriya Saigal, who has been working with bee experts at the agricultural universities of Punjab and Haryana.

“My idea is to create a cooperative on the lines of Amul to train bee keepers to process high-value products and market them globally,” said Saigal.