We Hub’s 1st programme under new CEO Sita to be launched soon

Hyderabad: To support women entrepreneurs at the grassroots level, State-led incubator for women entrepreneurs, We Hub has developed programmes and aspirational physical centre where the earning and learning of entrepreneurs will take place. The first programme, under Sita Pallacholla as the new CEO, will be launched in Nalgonda soon. Aligning with district administration and field functionaries, the programme will also happen at Mahila Pranganam, under a hub and spoke model.

Speaking at an event, Sita Pallacholla, said: “We cannot sit at our office in Hyderabad and try to understand the problems faced by entrepreneurs at grassroots level. At the moment, we will align with the district administrators’ work with field functionaries to understand what problems are specific there. What we will undertake, through our sector specific approach, will culminate to the last mile execution, which is, the entrepreneur getting money into their bank account.”

Without revealing the details, Pallacholla said that the first step under the programme is creating safe space for women entrepreneurs to operate in. Furthermore, the programme is designed to help women at grassroots level with training in technology, financial literacy, and providing guidance about the enterprise they want to set up. She further said, “We Hub is redressing working within a safe network by taking up sustainable business practices, which means they are resilient to external financial shocks and are prepared to run their businesses by being financially literate. We are also focused on supporting businesses scale up through collaborations, as women have no problem in starting a business but the biggest problem is scaling.”

With the launch of the new programme, We Hub said it aims to bring down dropout numbers of women entrepreneurs, after they find it hard to survive, through learn and earn approach. The programme is also set to make women autonomous business decision makers.

On the MSME front, We Hub is now focusing on monthly networking and mentorship roundtable that will grant them access to aspirational leaders within their specific sector. “Selected MSMEs will be trained in different aspects that they see as hurdles. We will create specific access points as cheat codes for them to follow so that they overcome hurdles and scale up,” Pallacholla added.

Citing Ministry of MSME’s report, Pallacholla said that around 96.5 per cent of businesses are still not formalised, hence We Hub will now on work towards ensuring that businesses are formal and compliant with Government norms.

Highlighting the challenges that, in general, women entrepreneurs face, Pallacholla said that societal barriers or social bias called as perception bias stands first, followed by access to funds. She said that Republic of Korea and India are the two countries in the world where women find it most difficult to raise funds due to heavy stereotyping of women in entrepreneurial roles, especially in the MSME sector.

Pallacholla noted, “Despite being primary care giver of the family, she has to prove that she will repay the loan and ensure that financial fulfillment of the enterprise is met. They spend 50 to 60 per cent of the resources to make people understand that they are a viable business option and that they deserve funding. It is not only about raising capital but also about micro businesses getting credit linkages, as they are not able to establish that they are natural decision makers in the business.”