Women entrepreneurs of Bengaluru: This mentoring programme can rapidly scale-up your business

Anywhere between 13.5 to 15.7 million women-owned enterprises make up 20 percent of all the enterprises in the country, according to the Google and Bain & Company report released in February 2020. This is a commendable rise of over 6 percent from a decade ago. Despite the growth, several constraints restrict women entrepreneurs from reaching their full potential.

However, those women entrepreneurs who have been successful in scaling up their business have expressed that the ‘mentoring’ support they receive in the early stages of their entrepreneurial journey have been instrumental in their rapid growth. And, today in the post COVID world, the challenges for entrepreneurs have intensified. More so for women entrepreneurs. Thereby the need for mentoring has never been stronger.

To support women entrepreneurs to adapt to the ‘new normal’ post COVID, and help the progress of their entrepreneurial journeys across definable stages, Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME) has launched the Futurepreneurs Bangalore Structure Mentoring program for Rapid Scaleup.

If you are a Bengaluru-based woman entrepreneur interested in seeking mentoring to scale-up your existing business significantly and rapidly, apply to the program today.

Who can apply?

Women entrepreneurs based in Bengaluru employing up to 50 employees in the non-IT sector are encouraged to apply. While there are no restrictions on the years of entrepreneurial experience needed or any cap on the stage of growth of the business, the enterprise should be making revenue from the products or services.

Illustrative examples of women who are encouraged to apply for the programme include those running restaurants,bakeries, beauty salons, pharmacies, boutiques, play schools, creches, tuitions, shoe shops, bag shops, among others.

What to expect

The programme will take place online, using existing communication technologies, and programme management tools. Women entrepreneurs will work with expert mentors and personal coaches to set goals for their personal, professional and company growth and achieve them.

Mentoring will be provided by Earth Impact Consulting, led by Gayatri Sriram and Aparna Devagiri, who have over 15 years of experience in coaching and mentoring.

Each entrepreneur will be tagged with at least one mentor throughout the programme. While mentoring is a highly personalised exercise and will depend largely on the entrepreneur, the programme will also broadly provide personal coaching, goal setting, and expert mentoring on areas such as customer acquisition, marketing and business development, financial audit of the business for credit worthiness, HR and employee management, among others.

Application programme structure

The application for the program will be executed in multiple phases. In phase one, GAME will invite applications to participate in the mentoring program. In phase two, GAME will also seek nominations from partner entrepreneur development organisations.

GAME will then shortlist the entrepreneurs based on a combination of application responses, participation in past and existing GAME programs and references in phase three. In phase four, a personal interview will take place for the shortlisted applicants to select the final candidates for the program.

The entrepreneurs selected to be a part of the programme will be placed in cohorts of 25 each. The applications for the program are now open.

Programme commitments

At the time of onboarding, entrepreneurs must sign off on a participation letter.

Participants must stay committed to the mission of the program by being available for the mentoring services of approximately 14-15 hours across eight months. They must demonstrate initiative to implement learnings from the programme into their businesses and also provide permission for GAME and its partners to track the progress of the mentor-mentee relationship

Women entrepreneurs with a passion for their business and a commitment to participate in the complete mentoring program to rapidly and effectively scale-up, apply to the Futurepreneurs Bangalore Structure Mentoring program for Rapid Scale-Up here.