Intuit India launches accelerator programme for women entrepreneurs

Intuit India's CSR initiative Intuit Rise launched the women-in-business accelerator programme to help women entrepreneurs grow their business.

As businesses go digital and innovative ones come into existence, the ecosystem is seeing a higher number of women entrepreneurs emerging.

According to the Sixth Economic Census conducted by the National Sample Survey Organisation, 14 percent businesses are run by women entrepreneurs and employ nearly 13.5 million people. The number of women entrepreneurs is showing healthy growth, supported by the government and other institutions.

Foray into this realm, Intuit India set up its flagship CSR initiative Intuit Rise, which aims to bring out initiatives focussed on women, youth, and environment.

Intuit, under this initiative, launched the women-in-business accelerator programme in September this year, in partnership with IIM-B and TechnoServe.

The programme will help women entrepreneurs grow their business through financial freedom. As part of the programme, 20 women entrepreneurs were shortlisted from Bengaluru, and over the next six months, will go through a business programme from IIM-B, receive mentorship from advisors of TechnoServe, and have constant engagement with Intuit employees.

In the first week of September, the first batch of women entrepreneurs spoke about their business at the Intuit campus, and have each received a one-year free subscription of Intuit QuickBooks, a Cloud Accounting Software for small businesses.

Speaking on the event, Nikhil Rungta, Managing Director, Intuit India said, “The landscape for entrepreneurship in India is changing, and we are seeing more and more women entrepreneurs taking an initiative to start new and innovative companies. The charter for Intuit Rise program is Educate, Enable and Empower. We want to expose these women to the latest leadership and management education, enable them to focus on what they love and pursue their passion, empower them to run their business with complete confidence.”

 “Mentorship programmes are ]essential at the beginning stages of any business. The programme instils independence by helping participants understand how to manage everything from basic accounting to strategic marketing. We also support them by providing weekly interventions from mentors and the right tools to enable their achievement,” said Vijay Anand, Senior Vice President, Intuit Global Development Centres.

The participants chosen for the programme have businesses in the education, lifestyle, design, health and technology sectors.