Niti Aayog's WEP partners with Urban Company for women empowerment

Niti Aayog's Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP) has partnered with Urban Company to empower women salon and beauty parlour owners, an official statement said on Friday.

According to the statement, WEP, under its award-to-reward initiative, launched the pilot to support women MSMEs to scale up their businesses in the beauty and wellness sector.

Women entrepreneurs will be offered training across six key ecosystem needs, including skilling, legal and compliance, access to finance, market, and business development services, along with mentorship and networking, it added.

A baseline study conducted by MicroSave Consulting identified four key sectors with more than 1,00,000 women MSMEs -- beauty & wellness, textile manufacturing, retail trade and food & beverages.

The statement said this pilot initiative aims to develop process templates by leveraging insights and learnings gathered through the programme and upscaling women MSMEs nationwide.

Urban Company will spearhead the programme, collaborating with other key stakeholders to identify women working in micro-units and support their business growth, it noted.

WEP, incubated in Niti Aayog in 2018 as an aggregator platform, transitioned into a public-private partnership in 2022.