New Delhi January 11, 2021: In an effort to enhance the community experience for women entrepreneurs in India, NITI Aayog and Flipkart have come together to launch the revamped Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP). The WEP is a first of its kind, unified access portal which brings together women from different parts of India to realize their entrepreneurial aspirations. The revamped version shall also include an additional feature to offer mentorship to the women mentees with specific knowledge concerning a problem area through a dedicated online mechanism facilitated under FICCI-FLO's Empowering the Greater 50% mission.

The idea of the platform was first mooted by Mr. Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog, who announced the setting-up of a WEP in NITI Aayog at the conclusion of the 8th Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) held in Hyderabad in 2017.

Women entrepreneurs today face unique obstacles, from a lack of networking opportunities and mentors to the challenge of balancing work and family. With that as a primary goal, NITI Aayog and Flipkart jointly bring forth the strength of technology and user experience to the foreground to enable 'Community' interaction and engagement for women entrepreneurs on the platform. The vision is to make 'Community' a very interactive, rewarding and intuitive QnA platform leveraging WEP resources.

The 'Community' on the WEP platform aims to connect knowledge-seeking women entrepreneurs who have questions or seek clarifications on multiple aspects of setting up new businesses (like registering businesses, GST, funding, effects of the pandemic, etc.), or progressing already established businesses; to knowledge providing women entrepreneurs who have experience in setting up businesses and hence can contribute by solving queries.

Mr. Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog, said, "It is my hope that WEP will become a digital place for entrepreneurs to not only seek information and support, but also help each other out. Serving as a forum for people's voices to be heard helping inform policies and programs to better suit the needs and requirements of people".

Mr. Kalyan Krishnamurthy, CEO, Flipkart Group, said, "At Flipkart, we have technology and innovation at the core of all that we do. As a homegrown company, our constant and intense engagement with local Indian businesses, MSMEs and start-ups has enabled us to better understand their challenges and needs. Today, we can power their ambition with locally developed technology by providing them access to a large consumer market and bring our strengths to benefit their experiences. The Women Entrepreneurship Platform plays a critical role in uplifting and empowering women-led businesses in their growth ambition and we are privileged to partner with NITI Aayog in enabling their journey to success".

Dr. Sangita Reddy Immediate Past President FICCI, said, "FICCI - FLO Empowering Greater 50% programme lays a special emphasis on enhancing entrepreneurial and decision-making skills of existing and aspiring women entrepreneurs through need-based Mentorship programmes and Mentor-Mentee matchmaking. WEP has been successfully bringing together women from different parts of India under one community and Greater 50's collaboration is a significant step to help women across India unlock new business opportunities."

The 'Community' page now has a revamped homepage and login experience, simplified by making the login form more intuitive and accessible via Google or Facebook. The platform will also be available in multiple regional languages, aligned with the #VocalForLocal initiative. Designed for both desktop and mobile, the 'Community' page is transformed into a QnA portal. Further, knowledge seekers and contributors can gift badges to each other as a token of appreciation. The revamped portal will encourage entrepreneurs to share their entrepreneurial journeys, stories and experiences to nurture mutual learning.

In this process, FICCI will support NITI Aayog and WEP to lay special emphasis on enhancing entrepreneurial and decision-making skills of women - based on mentorship programs and mentor-mentee matchmaking.

About Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP)

The WEP is a first of its kind, unified access portal which brings together women from different parts of India to build a nurturing ecosystem that enables them to realize their entrepreneurial aspirations. WEP achieves this by facilitating relevant information and services through key partnerships. As an aggregator platform, WEP hosts information and services relevant to women entrepreneurs. WEP enables key partnerships to bring crucial content, workshops, campaigns and other avenues of learning and growth to its users.

About FICCI-FLO Empowering the Greater 50% campaign

This mission is designed to SUPPORT, EMPOWER AND INSPIRE women in all walks of life. It has a special focus on enhancing entrepreneurial and decision-making skills of women through various offerings. These offerings include:

Training for Workplace inclusion and for Women in Corporate Boards.

Digital Financial Literacy.

Mentorship and Enterprise development.

Skilling and Capacity Building.

Legal Empowerment of women at grassroot level and awareness of basic legal rights at the workplace.

Livelihood interventions through CSR.

Webinars on women centric issues.

Inspirational Talks for girl students to pursue STEM education.

Mental Health and wellness workshops.

Special acknowledgment to women led / women focused positive stories.

Launched in June 2020, the programme aspires to touch the lives of at least 1,00,000 women over a period of three years.

About the Flipkart Group

The Flipkart Group is one of India's leading digital commerce entities and includes group companies Flipkart, Myntra, and Flipkart Wholesale. It started in 2007. It has a registered customer base of over 300 million, offering over 150 million products across 80+ categories. Flipkart is known for pioneering services such as Cash on Delivery, No Cost EMI and easy returns. The recent launch of Flipkart Wholesale is a testament to its commitment to accelerate the growth of kiranas and MSMEs in India.

For more information, please contact media@flipkart.com.