Women Acceleration Program : WECS

You got Wings, Let's fly now !

In India, women entrepreneurs are a crucial yet underrepresented force in the start-up ecosystem, facing significant structural challenges. Access to financing remains a major hurdle. Women-led businesses are facing an unmet credit gap of US$11.4 billion and receiving just 5.2 percent of credit from public sector banks. Familial funding, a common source of financing in India, is often inaccessible to women, with 43 percent reporting a lack of family support for their ventures.Additionally, women-led start-ups secured only

9.3 percent of VC funding in 2023, a sharp decline from 14.7 percent in 2021. Total funding raised by women-led start-ups fell dramatically from US$2.4 billion in 2022 to US$0.5 billion in 2023, reflecting systemic biases and limited support for women entrepreneurs. These funding challenges hinder the growth of women-led businesses and reduce their chances of achieving scale and sustainability.

Through this program we want to achieve –

A strong ecosystem for women Acceleration: Despite India’s strong entrepreneurial landscape, the support ecosystem for women entrepreneurs continues to be fragmented and insufficiently tailored to their needs. A significant number of women-led enterprises remain concentrated in traditional, low-value sectors and operate informally, limiting their ability to scale, improve productivity, and access larger markets. Women entrepreneurs frequently encounter challenges such as limited access

to finance, inadequate mentorship, weak professional networks, low levels of digital adoption, lack of export preparedness, and restricted access to technology and mobility. Additionally, most existing incubation and acceleration initiatives are designed as gender-neutral programs and often do not address the unique constraints faced by women entrepreneurs. The absence of a dedicated institutional framework in India that supports women-led enterprises across the entire entrepreneurial journey—from ideation and incubation to growth and market expansion—highlights a critical gap that presents a strong opportunity for focused intervention.