Guwahati: Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Pema Khandu has announced that the state government will set up a dedicated development cell for women entrepreneurs with seed money of Rs 5 crore.
Speaking at the opening session of the Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP) State Workshop, organized by NITI Aayog, in Itanagar on Friday, Khandu said, “The dedicated entrepreneurship centre for women will function as a hub for women entrepreneurs providing access to mentorship, capacity building exercises, and other programmes beneficial for women-led startups.
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The Centre will also run dedicated incubation and acceleration programmes for women.”
He also rolled out five new initiatives under WEP, which are ‘Supporting clean energy entrepreneurship through Atal Innovation Centre-SELCO Foundation partnership’; ‘Engendering growth for vibrant home-stay owners through the Maitri Programme in partnership with Make My Trip’; ‘launching of NASSCOM Future Skills’; ‘helpline for NE women entrepreneurs in collaboration with FICCI FLO’ and ‘launch of BITS, Pilani, and Aditya Birla Foundation’s Women Entrepreneurs programme’.
“These initiatives will be implemented by NITI Aayog and today’s rollout is for all states of the Northeast,” he said.
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CM Khandu informed that over the past 7 years, his government has adopted a holistic approach to creating an enabling environment for women entrepreneurs that includes multiple interventions such as policy support, monetary support through front-ended subsidies, earmarking of schemes for women entrepreneurs and micro-entrepreneurs, etc.
He specifically mentioned that approximately 6,500 of more than 20,000 MSMEs in Arunachal Pradesh are owned by women.
Referring to the Arunachal Pradesh Start-up Policy, spanning five years from its notification, Khandu said that under the policy a minimum of one Incubation Centre would be established in the state, and also to extend the facilities to at least 50% of districts over the next five years.