Over the past few years there have been noticeable changes in the Indian women entrepreneurship sector. To encourage positive developments in this field, a group of 10 young women were recently awarded at the Cherie Blair Foundation Women Mean Business Conference held in Mumbai. Out of the 10, three young college girls were from Delhi, who received the prestigious honour.
Akshina Gupta from IIT Delhi, Anita Gupta from Indus World School of Business and Urvashi Agarwal from Management Development Institute, were the three bright students from the capital who won the fellowships and met Cherie Blair at the conference.
The Cherie Blair Foundation-National Entrepreneurship Network (CBF-NEN) Fellowship is awarded every year to meritorious young women, who use their entrepreneurial skills to solve issues and benefit society.
Akshina Gupta, a student at IIT Delhi used her education to help launch the Student Entrepreneurship Network (SEN) in her college. She informs, “The entrepreneurship club in our college was set to promote leadership qualities among students. It is run by students and helps create awareness about various events happening in college for the benefit of students.”
For 25-year-old Urvashi Agarwal the zeal to help out students was more rewarding than a conventional IT job. After passing out from IIT-Kanpur she decided to work as the project assistant at the SIDBI Innovation and Incubation Centre (SIIC) in her college and guide students. She says, “I come from a traditional Marwari family where everyone is involved in family business. Entrepreneurship is something that comes to me naturally, so I decided to take this forward and help people. I utilised my knowledge to promote students of my college and initiated the SIIC to start networking. Right now, I am pursuing MBA at MDI to hone my skills further.”
The third award winner Ankita Gupta of IWSB got recognised for her contribution at the e-cell in her college along with successful planning for IWSB’s annual B plan and an interactive “My Journey” series with entrepreneurs. Talking about her experience at the award function and interaction with Cherie Blair she says, “It was a great honour to meet Mrs Blair and explain the entrepreneurial work we do to support young rural women. we told her how we help them by providing an opportunity to be independent. The entire initiative is managed by college students and we try to help these women get employment. It was really good to meet Cherie and talk to her about our work.”