INR 1 Crore seed fund for 10 Women’preneurs

 

Britannia Marie Gold My Startup Season 4.0 rolls our INR 1 Crore seed fund for 10 Women’preneurs

-Received interest from over 2 million aspirants: highest ever

India, 2023: Britannia Marie Gold My Startup initiative has announced the top ten winners of its 4^th Season and awarded them INR 10 Lakhs each to jump-start their business ventures.

Britannia Marie Gold's My Startup initiative is a platform that encourages women to become entrepreneurs, and in turn, become job creators and be financially independent. Running successfully for 4 seasons, the flagship initiative has received interest from over 2 million aspiring participants this season. The Britannia Marie Gold team has been able to train over 80,000 participants with a business skills’ training program.

This year, the shortlisted contestants presented their ideas to an illustrious panel of jury members comprising women entrepreneurs such as Rashmi Daga, Sairee Chahal, Piya Bahadur, Latha Chandramouli and Ruchika Bhuwalka. The jury also included prominent business and media personalities along with members from Britannia's leadership team.

Britannia Marie Gold's My Startup program has successfully run for four seasons, providing an ecosystem to budding women’preneurs to get funding and skilling support. Through the 4 years, the Initiative has collaborated with the likes of National Skills Development Council (NSDC) and Google to provide online training on financial literacy, micro entrepreneurial skills and communication skills necessary in a business environment.

One of the highlights of Season 4 is that all participants had access to Google’s WomenWill program, a business literacy program with a “how to” curriculum on turning an interest into a business, managing an enterprise, and promoting it for growth. All participants who completed the learning journey were awarded a certificate.

Speaking on the finale of Britannia Marie Gold My Startup contest 4.0, Amit Doshi, Chief Marketing Officer, Britannia Industries Limited said, “Over time, Britannia Marie Gold has established a strong connection with women across the country. According to a World Bank study, only seven out of every hundred entrepreneurs are women. As per the 6th economic census by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, women comprise just 13.76% of the total entrepreneurs in India. Our mission with the My Startup program is to steadily and sustainably grow the representation of women in the entrepreneurial ecosystem in India. The program focuses on 3 key requirements of financial assistance, skilling and marketplace access. In Season 4, we garnered interest from over 2 million aspirants from across India, making it the highest number ever. Our winners for this season come from some of the most remote towns and villages in the country and have displayed incredible grit and passion to bring alive their business ideas.  Britannia will play a consultant role and will handhold the winners as they embark on their entrepreneurial journeys”.

Shalini Puchalapalli, Director of Google Customer Solutions, Google India, commented on the finale saying, “Technology can help businesses grow — but only if the people who lead and work for those businesses have the right skills. This is especially true for women entrepreneurs across the board - be they small businesses, creators, developers, or start-ups – and the inspiration behind our commitment to support this community in their journeys through our products and platforms, and with skilling programs such as WomenWill. We’re delighted to have offered a new community of homepreneurs this specially designed curriculum through Britannia’s My Startup Contest for the second successive season and wish all participants success.” 

List of winners

Sr. No	Name	Age	State	Idea
1	Vasam Mounika	27	Telangana	Wants to grow kids focused handloom cotton apparel manufacturing business and add QR code-based identity tags for added safety.
2	Anisha Shetty	37	Maharashtra	Wants to build on her venture - children focused thrift store
3	Kanchan Bhadani	61	Jharkhand	Train tribal communities and make toys in mass for the markets through crochet craft technique
4	Anjali Srivastava	22	Uttar Pradesh	Satellite based AI solution for smarter cultivation to farmers
5	Soundharya R	26	Tamil Nādu	Earthen pottery kitchen utensils business
6	Sonali Deshmukh	35	Maharashtra	dehydrating seasonal fresh edible produce and sell under a B2B model
7	A.Vanitha	43	Tamil Nadu	Scale up her RTE and RTC healthy and nutritionally dense food startup brand BellyBrain.
8	Swati Namdev Katkar	37	Maharashtra	Create an auditory and verbal therapy center in rural areas
9	Kavitha Raghavendran	37	Tamilnadu	Offer inclusive education by opening a  Preschool for Special kids
10	Suhasini Suresh	40	Karnataka	Ease cleaning of water based mess with her revolutionary cleaning product - Zorb-it !