Blog

AWS, Lightspeed launch AccelerateHer 2023

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and venture capital firm Lightspeed India Partners have revealed AccelerateHer 2023, a programme to enable women founders of early-stage Indian startups to build, grow, and scale successful technology businesses.

The programme provides selected women-led startups access to mentorship opportunities with leaders across industries. They will also receive technical resources and benefits curated by AWS for early-stage startups, and connect with an active peer community of women founders. 

The selected cohort will get fundraising opportunities by pitching their solutions to a panel of leading investors at the conclusion of the programme.

AccelerateHer is open for tech startups founded in India in the past five years, having at least one woman founder or co-founder, and a minimum viable or launched product. Startups, either bootstrapped or having raised funding of less than $3 million, can apply. 

The selected early-stage startups will receive mentorship from leaders such as Puneet Chandok, President of Commercial Business, AWS India & South Asia; Abhishek Nag, Partner at Lightspeed; Amit Mehra, CFO of Lightspeed; Rahul Taneja, Partner at Lightspeed; Nithin Kamath, Founder & CEO of Zerodha; Shally Modi, Co-Founder of Pratilipi; Saumya Singh Rathore, Co-founder of WinZo, among others. 

56% informal female employees prioritise non-monetary aspects like building career: Report

There is a growing aspirational shift in the mindset of women representatives in the informal workforce, which is now more career-oriented and not just limited to livelihood, according to an ongoing study by Quess Corp .

The study revealed that more than half of informal female employees (56%) prioritise non-monetary aspects such as building a career, contributing to the community, learning new skills, and supporting their passions and interests.

For an increasing proportion of female employees, job security, training and career development are becoming absolute priorities – even beyond the contents of their pay slips, it said. From an informal employee’s perspective, women’s aspiration to ‘build a career’ via a job (18%) is higher than that of men (13%), the study noted.

The study also revealed that 63% of women from the informal economy claim that they would compromise on higher salaries in lieu of health benefits and a formal agreement, compared to only 28% of men. Moreover, 38% of female informal workers believe that the pandemic has highlighted the importance of job security.

As per Quess Staffing Solutions, industries such as media and entertainment (46%), auto and auto comm (42%), FMCG/FMCD (27%), e-com/logistics (27%), IT/ITES/education (22%) hold the highest share of women in the workforce. Moreover, salary trends indicate that female employees earn higher pay than their male counterparts across key industries such as retail, FMCG, EMPI, manufacturing, and real estate.

IITM Pravartak Technologies, Gradskey to offer industry skilling programmes

IIT Madras Pravartak Technologies Foundation and GRADSKEY, an AI/ML-based Skilling Platform as a Service (SPaaS) announced a partnership to train college students on ‘industry-ready deployable skills.’ 

The duo have set a target to cover 25,000 students of engineering and science colleges across India annually through this programme in which industry persons will train students on industry-ready deployable skills.

The programmes are open to students of the first semester to the third semester from B.E./B.Tech, B.Sc., M.Sc, BBA, MBA, BCA, and MCA degree courses. The courses are broken down into a shorter, yearly certification programme to gradually skill students according to their pace of learning.

(The copy will be updated throughout the day with the latest news.)