Telangana govt incubator WE HUB's first cohort of women entrepreneurs graduate
The WE Alpha student entrepreneurship programme takes college students through creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship, which are key pillars of the National Education Policy (NEP2020).
, an incubator by the Government of Telangana to foster and promote women entrepreneurship, announced the graduation of its first cohort of students who moved from idea/innovator to entrepreneurs.
The WE Alpha student entrepreneurship programme takes college students through creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship. The programme is focused on a curated curriculum and hands-on learning to impart a creative and critical thinking approach toward innovation and entrepreneurship. It selected 12 student teams across six colleges from Telangana.
The first cohort for WE Alpha included students from engineering and humanities colleges. The programme kicked off with training faculty from selected colleges to hone their skills for creating effective outcome-driven incubation programmes, and entrepreneurship training spaces for students as part of the New Education Policy 2020.
These selected student teams were taken through an in-person eight-week programme, encompassing ideation, technical mentoring, design knowledge, business skills, interpersonal skills, team building skills, and communication skills. They also had an opportunity to pitch for internships with WE HUB-incubated startups. The programme culminated with 12 teams developing prototypes. The teams will be supported by WE HUB to register with DPIIT (Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade) as startup companies.
Jayesh Ranjan, IAS, Principal Secretary to the Government of Telangana (IT E&C) said,
“We would like to encourage all the colleges across Telangana to engage with the Telangana innovation ecosystem through programmes like WE Alpha. Congratulations to the 12 students' teams and we are looking forward to supporting them as they scale further in their journey.”
Deepthi Ravula, CEO, WE HUB said,
“Over the past four years of the inception of WE Hub, we have been working on enabling a funnel where we can have more women enter the fields of innovation and entrepreneurship. WE HUB has created WE Alpha with a focus on students not only learning about entrepreneurship but also how to learn. The emphasis of the curriculum design of WE Alpha was to enable students to think critically and solve problems, be creative and multidisciplinary, and innovate, adapt, and absorb new material in the novel and changing fields."
The incubator said the applications for the next cohort are open, with the deadline for the same being August 15, 2022.
Edited by Kanishk Singh
