Meet 6 institutions supporting women-led startups

What do women-led startups in India need? Funding, yes, but also access to different networks, technical assistance, a go-to-market strategy, and mentorship.

For women founders, it’s about who gets seen, funded, and taken seriously. Chasing the big dream and starting up is not enough. They need all the support they can get to scale, sustain and be part of the big league. Women can build unicorns, too!

Over the past few years, state-led platforms, institutional incubators and accelerators have been designing pathways specifically for women founders through dedicated cohorts, targeted outreach and capital-linked support.

Here are 6 institutions shaping the shift.

WE Hub

WE Hub, a government of Telangana initiative, is India’s first state-led organisation for women entrepreneurs. It works across urban and rural ecosystems and supports founders at different stages, from ideation to scale. Going beyond incubation, WE Hub positions itself as a bridge between policy, capital, and market access.

Within the WE Hub ecosystem, women entrepreneurs can connect with investors and corporates, and access mentorship to grow their businesses. It also helps women founders to scale sustainably and access national and global markets.

WE Hub offers a mix of seed funding, mentoring, business guidance and government linkages. So far, it has incubated 10,000 startups and MSMEs, and aims to build a community of one million women entrepreneurs across India.

NSRCEL

A startup incubator at IIM Bangalore, NSRCEL, has, over the years, designed targeted programmes for women entrepreneurs, including the Women Startup Program, which has supported women entrepreneurs in transforming their ideas into business ventures.

The NSRCEL Women Startup Program is a flagship initiative designed to support women entrepreneurs across India, particularly those at the idea and early stages of business development. Backed by Kotak Mahindra Bank, the programme focuses on strengthening entrepreneurial and managerial capabilities while helping founders translate ideas into viable, scalable ventures. Since its inception, it has aimed to create an inclusive ecosystem where women can access the tools, knowledge, and confidence needed to build sustainable businesses.

Structured as an end-to-end journey, the programme begins with foundational entrepreneurship training and progresses through pre-incubation and incubation phases. Participants receive mentorship from industry experts, access to networks and co-incubation partners, and support across legal, compliance, and business strategy areas. Selected startups can also access grant funding of up to Rs 3 crore, along with opportunities to showcase their work and scale. Notably, the programme is free of cost and does not take equity, making it a high-impact platform for women founders looking to grow their ventures.

Late last year, NSRCEL partnered with Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women to offer a fully funded, comprehensive business education programme for women entrepreneurs in India.

WEneurs Forum

The only women-focused incubator in eastern India, WEneurs Forum addresses a critical blind spot in the startup ecosystem: regional disparity. While most incubators cluster around metros, WEneurs focuses on enabling founders from underrepresented geographies.

WEneurs Forum, founded by Manisha Acharya, began as a WhatsApp group, and soon the informal network grew to include 200 woman-led startups. Registered in 2021,

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 in Eastern India dedicated to women entrepreneurs.

While many accelerators tend to focus either on high-tech urban ventures or grassroots rural enterprises, WEneurs consciously bridges this divide. The platform recognises that whether a woman is building an AI-driven healthcare solution in Bengaluru or running a mushroom cultivation business in rural Uttarakhand, the core entrepreneurial challenges—access, capital, and networks—remain strikingly similar.

To address this, WEneurs offers a range of flagship programmes, including Financial Fusion, Srijana, Aadya, WISE, and Fund Finder, each designed to support women founders at diverse stages of growth and across diverse contexts.

Womennovator

Womennovator, an initiative of Gvriksh, positions itself as one of the first global incubators dedicated to women, aligned with United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 5.

Founded by Tripti Singhal Somani, the platform focuses on enabling women entrepreneurs to scale both domestically and internationally, while also building distribution networks and leadership pathways. Its vision extends beyond entrepreneurship, encouraging women to become directors, job creators, and policy influencers, shaping systemic change.

With a presence across 20 countries—including the Middle East, the US, Australia, South Africa, Dubai, and Bangladesh—and a strong footprint in over 100 Indian cities, Womennovator supports ventures across 90+ sectors.

Womennovator’s initiatives are designed to address real gaps in market access and growth. Programmes such as Vendor Meets, Brand Ambassador Equity Program, WE Talk (both physical and virtual), WE Pitch to Fund, and WE Embassy engagements create opportunities for funding, partnerships, and expansion.

Its WE Shop e-commerce platform further enables women to tap into B2B sales and direct selling channels, while curated coffee table books spotlight both women leaders and allies who support them.

AIC Banasthali Vidyapith University

The Atal Innovation Centre at Banasthali Vidyapith, one of the world’s largest women’s universities, is one of India’s leading business incubators dedicated exclusively to women-led startups in science, technology, and deeptech. It provides funding across every stage of the startup lifecycle, backed by intensive mentoring, business development guidance, and market access.

A key strength of the incubator lies in its world-class R&D lab infrastructure, with a strong emphasis on translational research that bridges innovation and real-world application.

Its Womenpreneur program has successfully completed 5 cohorts of incubation and 6 cohorts of acceleration, supporting 130 women-led startups throughout their growth journey.

It also joined hands with Stanford Seed, an initiative by Stanford Graduate School of Business. The Stanford Seed Spark is a five-month online entrepreneurship programme for early-stage, revenue-generating startups.

SonderConnect

Founded in 2016, SonderConnect set out to bridge a critical gap by providing access to mentorship, investors, and a strong peer network for women founders often excluded from traditional startup ecosystems.

Nearly a decade on, the impact is tangible. The platform has run nine cohorts, supported 167 women-led startups, and engaged over 250 women founders. Around 35 of these ventures have collectively raised more than $100 million, with three emerging as winners on Shark Tank. Notably, 70% of the startups nurtured by SonderConnect continue to operate, reflecting both resilience and sustained support.