Neereti Mounika had just completed her intermediate when she got married. Out of her zeal to do something and be independent, she completed her bachelor’s degree after marriage and started home tuitions to contribute to the household income. But the idea of starting a business was brewing in her mind for the past eight years.

A beneficiary under the Telangana government’s Dalit Bandhu scheme and We-Hub’s support mechanism, Mounika is one of the many women from the marginalised sections, who is on her way to become an entrepreneur.

“When I got to know about the Dalit Bandhu scheme, I made multiple visits to Huzurabad from Ghatkesar to avail the scheme, but nothing moved for me until WE-Hub intervened,” Mounika said.

WE-Hub (Women Entrepreneurs Hub) is India’s first and only state-led incubator to promote and foster women entrepreneurship. The Dalit Bandhu scheme provides one-time capital assistance of Rs 10 lakh to every Scheduled Caste family as 100 percent grant/subsidy to establish a suitable income generating scheme as per their choice (without bank loan linkage).

“The idea is to help women transition from being a beneficiary to an entrepreneur. Many of them have come across such seed capital once in their life and we help them gain the financial literacy to make use of it. Many of them look around and do the same as what everyone is doing due to lack of free research. We help them set up a sustainable business in the field they choose. We also help them create a source of livelihood not only for themselves, but people around them,” Deepthi Ravula, CEO of WE-Hub, told News18.

After witnessing We-Hub’s success with women entrepreneurs in Ramagundam, the Karimnagar district administration has asked the team to facilitate the implementation of Dalit Bandhu in Huzurabad region of Karimnagar.

In the first round of orientation, WE-Hub conducted an entrepreneurship development programme session for 790 SC women selected by the local administration under the Dalit Bandhu scheme. Out of the 790 women, 343 expressed an interest to start their units.

One-on-one sessions were conducted for interested candidates, to understand their business idea, assess business viability, and develop core project reports (CPR). The women entrepreneurs were guided through an end-to-end seven-step process of enterprise establishment – beginning from scouting for a suitable location to ground the enterprise to apprising the candidates of the required documentation, supporting them in availing required registrations and licences, connecting them with vendors for purchasing machinery, getting quotations from vendors, verification of quotations and approval to executive director office for releasing the scheme amount.

“WE-Hub enabled 343 women to establish their enterprises in the district,” Ravula said.

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