Google has launched the ‘Women Will’ web platform on International Women’s Day. This platform will be complemented by community support, mentorship, and accelerator programmes for rural women entrepreneurs.
Key Points
- Women Will platform is a platform designed especially for women aspiring to explore entrepreneurship.
- It is available in English and Hindi
- To start with, Google will work with 2,000 Internet Saathis to help other women gain from this resource and start on their entrepreneurial journey.
- With an aim to support the economic empowerment of women in India, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has announced $25 million in grants to non-profits and social enterprises in India and around the world.
- He also committed to helping 1 million women in rural villages in India to become entrepreneurs through business tutorials, tools, and mentorship, as part of the Google Internet Saathi programme.
- During the ‘Google for India’ virtual event, Pichai said as an impact of a pandemic, women are almost twice as likely to lose their jobs and approximately 20 million girls are at risk of not returning to schools.
- Google also announced a $500,000 Google.org grant to Nasscom Foundation for supporting 100,000 women agriculture workers with digital and financial literacy.
- The virtual event also marked the completion of Google’s joint effort with Tata Trusts to empower women across rural India with digital literacy skills via the Internet Saathi programme that was launched in 2015.
- Since the launch, the Internet Saathi programme has benefitted more than 30 million women across India through training provided by over 80,000 Internet Saathis.
Union Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani also gave a special address at the event. During her address she said that women can act as great enablers of India’s growth story, creating tectonic shifts in society.
