Foundation and Advanced Program in Entrepreneurship for Women

About Programme & Partners 

The National Commission for Women is the apex statutory organization working towards enabling women to achieve equality and equal participation in all spheres of life. Acknowledging that economic independence is the key to women's empowerment, NCW aims to create a lasting impact for women across the country by providing women entrepreneurs access to the knowledge and skills required to grow and sustain their entrepreneurial ventures.

To this end, National Commission for Women with MyGov has joined hands with the Centre of Excellence for Social Innovation (CESI) of the Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode, a renowned academic institution fostering excellence in management, innovation, and entrepreneurship, and has envisioned a collaborative online training program to nurture and build entrepreneurial capability among women entrepreneurs. CESI, at the Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode, will design and execute the program.

About the Program

Entrepreneurship can tremendously help enhance the growth of an emerging economy like India. The pandemic has hampered economic progress by the restrictions and consequent unemployment, risk-aversion, and lowered consumption of non-essentials. Entrepreneurs can boost the economy and mitigate economic hardships to a large extent. They are the new Bravehearts who choose the route of entrepreneurship to try out their ideas to fill gaps in the market while providing a livelihood to several others.

Entrepreneurship has always been a gendered phenomenon, with a far lesser number of women choosing it as a road to empowerment. Being so creates a need to nurture women with entrepreneurship ambitions and develop the skills and perspectives that will help them set up and run sustainable businesses.

About Foundation Program in Entrepreneurship

The Foundation Program in Entrepreneurship is designed for women who want to enter the entrepreneurial arena. It will aim to develop the entrepreneurial skills required to identify a business opportunity and set up a business and the managerial capability to run the enterprise successfully. The pedagogy will include lectures, discussions, entrepreneurship talks, and significant mentoring from various subject matter experts.

The duration of the Foundation Program is four months, with four hours of class every week. The program will comprise sixty hours of learning with forty hours of subject sessions and twenty hours dedicated to mentoring and Q&A.

Length: Four Months
Effort: 4 hours per week

A Participant is expected to have more than 80% attendance in the academic and mentoring sessions. In addition, she needs to score more than 60% marks in the final evaluation (one MCQ exam) to be eligible for the certificate of completion in the Entrepreneurship Development Program for Women.

Language of delivery: English & Malayalam

The academic session of the Programs will be bi-lingual (in English and Malayalam). All the course materials, including presentation decks, articles for reading, and cases, will be in English. Question and answer sessions and mentoring sessions will be bi-lingual.

Level: Introductory

About Advanced Program in Entrepreneurship

The Advanced Program in Entrepreneurship is designed for women entrepreneurs who want to scale up their businesses. It will aim to augment their entrepreneurial skills in finetuning their business model, expanding their markets, accessing funds, and diversifying their product or services. In addition, the program will help enhance their managerial capability to run the enterprise. The pedagogy will include lectures, discussions, entrepreneurship talks, and significant mentoring from various subject matter experts.

The duration of the Advanced Program is four months, with four hours of class every week. The program will comprise sixty hours of learning with twenty hours of subject sessions and forty hours dedicated to mentoring and Q&A.

Length: Four Months
Effort: 4 hours per week

A Participant is expected to have more than 80% attendance in the academic and mentoring sessions. In addition, she needs to score more than 60% marks in the final evaluation (one MCQ exam) to be eligible for the certificate of completion in the Entrepreneurship Development Program for Women.

Language of delivery: English & Malayalam

The academic session of the Programs will be bi-lingual (in English and Malayalam). All the course materials, including presentation decks, articles for reading, and cases, will be in English. Question and answer sessions and mentoring sessions will be bi-lingual.

Level: Introductory

Guidelines For Applicants

Graduation in any discipline; running their own business.

1. Participation is open to all women entrepreneurs who can understand oral and written content in English and Malayalam and are citizens of India.
2. The application process requires submitting a short video. Video submission should be as professional as possible and should not exceed 5 minutes. The objective is to understand your enterprise and your plans to grow the business. The video can be in either Malayalam or English. The applicant has to share the link to their video via file-sharing/video hosting services such as YouTube and Vimeo.
3. Multiple entries from the same participant are not allowed, and the person may face disqualification.
4. Any participant's false representation or submission of any wrong information will disqualify their participation.
5. The entry must not contain any provocative, objectionable, or inappropriate content.
6. All the entries submitted by the contestants will only be used for this program, and participants consent to use information submitted by them.

Timelines for applying