Google has announced its first accelerator program for women-led startups in India. It aims to help women-led startups scale by connecting them to the right mentors and network of other startups and assisting them in raising funding and hiring the best tech talent.
Every year, Google plans to shortlist 40 startups, divide them into two cohorts, and mentor each cohort for three months. The program is open to startups that have raised a seed to series A round of funding and include a woman on the founding team.
“There’s a large women population with the ambition to truly build and design and influence society, but they’re not getting access to capital”, said Aditya Swamy, Director, Google Play & Google for Startups. The accelerator will also focus on assisting these startups with their funding needs.
Billions of dollars are raised by startups in India, but only 6% of funding goes to women-led startups. Startups that women entirely lead accounted for only 1.5% of the funding said Swamy.
“In one of the surveys, almost 48 per cent of women said that they need access to a better mentor and we want to solve this. Importantly, there’s nothing like having a peer group that allows you to connect and grow,” said Paul Ravindranathan G, program manager, Developer Relations and head of Google Accelerator at Google India.
The focus of the programme will be mentoring, hiring, capital raising, building a community, and networking.
Under its accelerator programme, Google so far has had 6 cohorts, which have had over 100 companies who went on to raise over $2 billion and created 12,000 jobs. Swamy also added that one in every 10 companies from Google’s accelerator programme has raised $100 million.
