First Cohort Completion: Google Startup Accelerator for Women Founders

The first cohort of the Google startup accelerator programme for Indian women founders successfully graduated on Tuesday.
The three-month program included a curriculum and possibilities for participation that addressed issues including network, mentorship, and financial accessibility.
The initiative which was started last year aims to support companies as they develop and expand.
Between 25,000 and 27,000 tech firms were founded in India during the past ten years, according to a Zinnov-Nasscom research, however women now make up less than 18% of startup founders and leaders.
One of the 20 founders who participated in the programme, Srishty Jain of the business CoLLearn, said: “Our viewpoint shifted. We started thinking about how we could help folks outside of India and the rest of the world. Also, it gave us a framework for organised thinking about product releases, scaling up, and digital marketing, all of which have been helpful to our team and have helped us map out the course for our following phase of growth.”
According to Aakanksha Varude of OPOD Audio, who was also a participant said, “the programme allowed us to dig down to our roots, directly to addressing the leaks in our pipeline”.
The inaugural cohort demonstrates the potential of a group of peers who deal with comparable challenges, according to Paul Ravindranath, the programme manager of Google for Startups Accelerator India, who wrote about it in a blog post. He asserted that several of the female founders had begun conducting business with one another in addition to forming alliances among themselves.
We can’t wait to start taking applications for the next group, he declared.