Asha Jomis
Asha Jomis wants every woman to disrupt, create and innovate. She is founder of the Women’s Business Incubation Program where lady entrepreneurs are moulded from their business ideation stage straight up to the launch. They are provided a co-working space, staff, mentoring, access to funds (through bank loans), policy awareness, business and financial plan, marketing and social media management. This initiative works in collaboration with Centre for India and Global business under the guidance of Professor Jaideep Prabhu and Dr. Achuthsanker of University of Kerala. She also runs an Augmented Reality startup Augsys Technologies PvtLtd. Asha, who holds an M.Phil in Technology Policy from University of Cambridge, is passionate about the startup ecosystem and has brought Startup Grind to Kerala and is the chapter director for the same. Based on the experience of documenting the narratives of various IT companies, student projects from engineering colleges and e-governance initiatives of government, in 2005, she launched the online portal networkofcolleges.com for creating a collaborative platform for industry, government and academia. The purpose of the platform was to create solutions and prototypes by students for industry and the government. This project is now revived under the brand GoDigital at WBIP. In 2007-2009, she pursued her masters in Technology Management at University of Kerala. During this time, she did a technology show in Asianet news, Right Click.
Interaction with various policy makers at the UN motivated her to pursue a career in policy. Since her academic background was in Technology, she decided to take up Technology policy to build on her previous academic qualification. After graduating from Cambridge, she returned to Thiruvanthapuram to set up WBIP. “In addition to incubation, we have an ongoing internship programme for students named ‘Intrepreneur’, a social good hackathon called #socialgoodhack and GoDigital initiative for digital engagement in academia, industry, government and lifestyle,” she informs. WBIP also conducts events named #womenatwork featuring talks by women from various walks of life. She loves travelling and has visited around 25 countries. She now lives in Thiruvanthapuram with her husband Jomis and son Avira.