empoWer 3rd Cohort Accelerates 30 Women Entrepreneurs with a Grand Demo Day

Zone Startups India hosted the demo day of the 3rd cohort of empoWer accelerator program, on 29th March 2019 at the BSE International Convention Centre. The demo day was attended by over 100 guests, that largely included the investor community, industry leaders and large corporations. The grand Demo Day followed a 6-month accelerator program, which connected these entrepreneurs to over 90+ mentors, including industry leaders and subject matter experts.

The 3rd cohort of empoWer was launched in September 2018, with a focus on technology-led women-owned businesses in enterprise tech and social tech. 15 women founders were on-boarded as a part of the 2 parallel tracks.  This edition of empoWer is in partnership with Indian Clearing Corporation Limited (ICCL), a wholly owned subsidiary of BSE Ltd. (BSE), as the lead Industry Sponsor and Department of Science and Technology (GoI), Government of Quebec, Concordia University, La Coop fédérée, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and Amazon Launchpad,  as Supporting Partners.

The launch was a part of a full-day conference that was presided by 25+ women leaders from the industry. This was followed by multi-city roadshows at Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Delhi and Pune, and an online application campaign that brought in 285 applications from diverse domains – ranging across financial services, media, smart cities, healthcare, education, agriculture and retail to name a few. The program focused on technology areas such as Deep Tech, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Enterprise Mobility, Search & Feedback Engines, Enterprise Software; making it is a very interesting mix of tech applications.

Ajay Ramasubramaniam, Director (India), Zone Startups said “This was a new experience for us, to manage 2 parallel cohorts under empoWer. The nature of startups is to be iterative, and we at Zone Startups India consider ourselves to be one. After the first 2 cohorts, we realized the need to split up enterprise tech and social tech as separate themes; as the nature of support and program required is different. One the feedback we got over the past 2 years, was a request from entrepreneurs who missed out due to smaller cohort size, asking if we would think of expanding the same. This year, with the funding availability it gave us the bandwidth to so. We are extremely delighted by the composition of the cohorts and the kind of companies that are being built. We look forward to greater success with empoWer and enabling more women entrepreneurs in India”.

The opening Keynote at the empoWer Demo Day was delivered by Apurva Purohit, President - Jagran Prakashan Ltd., and she touched upon an empowering message to our women leading the way in today’s startup ecosystem.

The keynote address was followed by a high profile panel discussion on whether gender inclusion is the key to boosting innovation in entrepreneurial ecosystem. The panel was made up of representatives from a diverse background, and comprised of Deepali Naair, Director - Marketing (India & South Asia), IBM, Anjalli Ravi Kumar, Social Mission Director, Unilever and Shweta  Aprameya, Co-founder HAPPY & Founder AU Welfare Foundation. The session was moderated by Kritika Saxena, Chief of Bureau- Mumbai and South, CNBC-TV18.

After much deliberation, the jury of investors and tech leaders awarded the top 18 women-led startups with an equity free seed funding of INR 5 lakhs each, based on the strength of their business model, their team, their market viability and their products/services. The seed funds were supported by BSE CSR Foundation.