How WEneurs Forum is supporting women entrepreneurs at every stage

When Manisha Acharya decided to launch WEneurs Forum in 2021, she wasn't just starting another platform for women entrepreneurs. She was addressing a stark reality: while women constitute 50% of India's population, only 14% contribute to the entrepreneurial landscape.

The gap wasn't just about numbers, it was systemic.

With decades of experience in innovation, incubation, startup mentoring, and corporate roles—her stint as the CEO of Indigram Labs Foundation exposed her to specific challenges faced by women entrepreneurs. 

Acharya holds a PhD in Botany from Lucknow University, is a Chevening Fellow, and has been featured among 75 outstanding women in STEM by the Government of India.

“In my time at Indigram Labs, we organised several acceleration programmes across India. I saw that women entrepreneurs face specific challenges,” she tells HerStory.

Women as builders of a new economy

Acharya wanted to change the narrative that existed around women.

"Women are not just beneficiaries, women are the builders of the new economy,” she emphasises.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, she noticed that women-centric startups were shutting down at alarming rates as entrepreneurs struggled to balance company work with family responsibilities.

The immediate solution was simple. She created a WhatsApp group and soon the informal network grew to 200 women-led startups. Based in Bhubaneshwar, Odisha, WEneurs Forum was registered on August 12, 2021, and became the first incubator and accelerator from Eastern India to be dedicated to women entrepreneurs.

In 2023, Jayanti Mahapatra joined as the co-founder of WEneurs, bringing with her experience that would help the platform build entrepreneurship from ground up, especially in rural areas.

With multiple qualifications—MBA, MSW and an MA in Psychotherapy, Mahapatra started her career with Dell Financial Services, and later moved to HSBC, where she spent 12 years, with her last stint as VP handling migration setups and operations across North America and the MENA region.

Mahapatra returned to Odisha in 2013-14 to launch Manikastu Agro Private Limited, working with marginal farmers on goat banking and animal husbandry. Her ground-level experience in rural entrepreneurship complemented Acharya's deep tech innovation expertise.

Acharya emphasises that WEneurs helps women entrepreneurs at every stage—from ideation to scale. They have tailor-made programmes if they want to connect to only investors.

“For deeptech startups, after the innovation phase, they don’t know how to reach the market. Many innovations fail due to this,” she points out.

Mahapatra believes that women entrepreneurs are also bogged down by the “cultural aspect”, especially family dominance and decision making.

“Apart from these, women in rural India face other challenges like education, access to finance and markets, and multiple operational delivery systems,” she adds. 

Bridging the urban-rural divide

While most accelerators focus either on high-tech urban startups or rural social enterprises, WEneurs bridges both worlds. The platform recognises that a woman is building an AI-powered healthcare solution in Bengaluru or a mushroom cultivation enterprise in rural Uttarakhand face similar fundamental challenges. To this end, it offers several flagship progammes like the Financial Fusion Program, Srijana, Aadya, WISE, and Fund Finder. 

The Aadya Program addresses the pipeline problem by engaging with over 700 school girls annually, teaching them that career options extend beyond the traditional doctor-engineer binary.

"We want to change the mindset that medicine and engineering are the only options, you can be an entrepreneur or an innovator,” Acharya says.

The Financial Fusion Program tackles the critical challenge of financial literacy among women entrepreneurs, while their Fund Finder initiative connects startups with investors.

 The Explorer Program supports ideation-stage entrepreneurs, while their Accelerator programme works with those who have developed prototypes or MVPs and Trailblazer is only for those who want to connect with investors. They also organise one-to-one mentoring sessions for incubated startups, that includes prominent angel investors as mentors.

With their guidance, several startups have secured MSME grants, and one has been awarded the prestigious BIRAC BIG Grant.

The numbers tell part of the story—54 startups incubated, over 400 urban entrepreneurs trained, and more than 600 rural women empowered. But the real impact lies in individual transformation stories.

Take ThinkRAW Innovative Solution, founded by Minushri Madhumita and WEneurs' first incubated startup. Its IoT-based aquaculture product Dhivaramitra and innovative fertiliser dispenser Krishidhanu secured their first order from NABARD through WEneurs' connections. The startup has since gained selection in Stanford's SeedSpark programme and the prestigious Miller Center for Global Impact—the world’s oldest incubation centre.

“In the beginning, we faced many challenges in pitch deck preparation, hiring, operatorial and financial management, investor networking, fund-raising and scaling up. WEneurs organised the requisite one-to-one mentoring sessions for us and provided specific guidance and resources,” says Minushri.

ThinkRAW has already impacted more than 6,400 beneficiaries by creating new job opportunities both directly and indirectly, integrating fish and prawn farmers with modern sustainable technologies  to enhance their harvest and reduce labour intensity, and promoting women’s  participation in the aquaculture sector.

Han Agri Innovation, started by Dr Hiresha Verma, and part of WEneurs’ WISE Acceleration Program, has trained more than 5,000 tribal women in mushroom cultivation.

"WEneurs has offered us visibility and outreach through their digital and offline channels, strategic mentorship and ecosystem introductions, supported us in refining our business model and social impact narrative and facilitated networking opportunities," says Verma.

Forging partnerships

WEneurs has forged partnerships with government incubators, financial institutions, and universities across India. Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) with organisations like the Institute of Life Sciences and DST ensure that startups receive appropriate sectoral support.

"We collaborate with incubation centres of the country and we make sure the support is local for the startup. For example, in Uttarakhand, they can be incubated in one of the government incubation centres there itself,” Mahapatra says.

Operating as a non-profit with a lean team of five, WEneurs faces the classic social enterprise challenge: balancing impact with sustainability. 

The organisation operates primarily on a bootstrapped model, supplemented by selective CSR funding and their 12A ITG status.

By 2030, the founders aim to reach 10,000 women entrepreneurs and educate 10,000 girls in innovation and entrepreneurship. 

“We want to set up a finishing incubation centre, which will not only be just a centre, it should be an economic zone, creating and multiplying with the halo effect and encouraging more women into entrepreneurship,” Mahapatra says.