Nasscom and Google set up a call center to help rural women entrepreneurs grow their businesses
In partnership with a non-profit organization called ISAP, the Nasscom Foundation and Google established a phone center to assist women farmers in growing their businesses.
In partnership with a non-profit organization called ISAP, the Nasscom Foundation and Google established a phone center to assist women farmers in growing their businesses.
The program is being operated as a pilot to initially reach out to 20,000 rural women entrepreneurs across six states: Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, and Rajasthan.
“DigiVaani will be one site where rural women entrepreneurs will be able to contact and acquire information about the many programs accessible to them, whether it be a government program or any other information that can be helpful for them, The call centre will also pro-actively reach out to rural women entrepreneurs whose data is being made available to them”
She said that the project has been funded by Google and the decision to scale up DigiVaani will be taken after a year.
A DigiVaani call centre has been set up at the Delhi and Lucknow offices of the Indian Society of Agribusiness Professionals (ISAP) with combined headcount of 19 people.
“We are working with partners and making them aware of our service to reach out to rural women entrepreneurs,” Bhasin said.
“Google.org is a philathropic arm of Google which has given grant of USD 500,000 to Nasscom Foundation to promote women entrepreneurship. We have realised that with labour participation rates going down for women, the next leap has to be women entrepreneurship,” Google India & Southeast Asia Vice President, Marketing, Sapna Chadha said.
She said that Google has done a study with Bain Capital, which showed that women enterprises can contribute more than a quarter of the workforce required for the next 30-40 years.