Two-day bootcamp for women entrepreneurs held in Tripura

Agartala, Mar 26: The US Consulate General Kolkata, in partnership with Contact Base, organised a two-day state-level Bootcamp of the ‘Academy for Women Entrepreneurs’ (AWE) programme in Agartala, on March 26-27 to identify enterprising women in Tripura and Mizoram.

The programme provides rigorous training in the basics of business, marketing strategies and personalised mentoring from industry professionals. The overall focus is to support women entrepreneurs from the two geographical regions through US-style knowledge sharing, training, and network-building.

In 2020, Consulate General Kolkata launched the AWE pilot in India, and since then, the program has continued to reap dividends for women across the country. AWE participants and alumni have continued to develop partnerships, built specific skills, and explored funding opportunities with the help of public-private partnerships to scale their businesses. This includes giving participants access to the online ‘Dream Builder’ training programme, created by Arizona State University.

Addressing the gathering virtually, the Public Affairs Officer of the US Consulate, Kolkata, and the Director of the American Center, Elizabeth Lee, said, “The United States believes that gender equality, equity, and access to resources is critical to our shared goals of prosperity, stability, and peace. We at the US Consulate Kolkata, are driven to work with women to provide them the tools for economic empowerment, which will allow them and their families and their communities to live happier, healthier lives.”

The two-day bootcamp was organised at the Shaheed Bhagat Singh Youth Hostel, Agartala, with more than 40 women entrepreneurs from Tripura and five business mentors and experts from Assam, West Bengal and Tripura. These mentors have years of professional experience. Most entrepreneurs were early-stage businesswomen in sectors such as textiles, handicrafts, handlooms, food production, sustainability and jewellery.

Through personalised and group mentoring sessions, the entrepreneurs learned to develop individual business profiles, acquire a comprehensive sense of market-customer-product mapping, articulate a growth plan and identify capacity gaps.