HYDERABAD: As the International Women's Day on March 8 draws close, the environment on social media might change with netizens sharing 800-word-long essays on the failed initiatives by the State and its subsidiaries to improve the physical, social and financial well-being of women.
Four women entrepreneurs incubated under State government's WeHub are making strides using their technological expertise and business acumen.
The 25-year-old Aashraya Rau, a mechanical engineer by training, wanted to solve the problem that bugged her from her days at the Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Technology, Hyderabad. When the streak of social justice was raging, she was unaware of whom to contact or how to fund a social initiative.
Years later, she is now launching Yugenie, India's first global action-led social network dedicated to driving social impact on the ground. For this, she is attempting to bring together a vast network of people and social organisations under the Android-based platform, where they can interact and host events. A centralised library of social organisations is also being built, which, she claims, would increase the visibility of organisations by 70 per cent.
"There are more than 340 million millennials and GenZ, who are actively engaged with impact work on a daily basis. The present platforms are archaic, disorganised and fragmented. With Yugenie, we are trying to move beyond crowdfunding platforms, where there is no motivation to donate. We want to build a larger relationship of trust between people and organisations, rather than asking people to donate and leave," Aashraya tells The New Indian Express.
With Illuminated Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO), she wants to introduce cryptocurrency in the Web 3 version of her app, which aims to build crypto communities, where there is scope for people to get incentivised to solve the pressing issues of the world.
Ola-Uber model for the farm
For the 27-year-old K Hari Priya Reddy, the CEO of Blubot Robotics, the leap from making ad films to using drone to spray chemical on crops seems quite seamless.
She is replicating the Ola-Uber model in her app named 'Krishi Yantra', enabling users to place service orders for drone spraying, where farmers would also be provided with a drone pilot. "By using water to spray pesticides, the water usage can be brought down by 90 per cent and 30 per cent of chemical usage can be reduced. It also saves on the cost of labour and time," she tells The New Indian Express.
Her company has trained 200 rural youngsters in Khammam as drone pilots and added that she would be expanding it to Nizamabad, Warangal and Kamareddy districts too, where she has her base of customers.
Concerned parents
As millennials turn parents, they are looking to challenge and improve upon the age-old traditions of child upbringing. Monitoring a child’s growth is a crucial task as they become toddlers from newborns.
Shireen Sultana (41) has started a child health platform called KinderPath, where she has used globally recognised milestone markers to help parents regularly check for the growth parameters of their child, and act upon any deviation from the normal, which may impact the child’s growth adversely.
She has involved certified healthcare experts, Montessori and preschool teachers, with whom parents can have live interactions. The app has been downloaded 8.5 lakh times, with 3 lakh users observed in a month. Her startup was recognised as 'the best product led by women', by HYSEA in 2021.
Mission to upskill women
A similar platform, but with a different objective was started by Nishtha Yogesh (29), CEO of Hunar Online Courses (HOC). Her app offers 100 pre-recorded online courses in the areas of fashion, food and beauty, which is available at Rs 1,000 for a six-month course. The app, which is available in Telugu, English and Hindi, has been downloaded 2 million times and has 20 lakh active users.
In the past three years, she claims to have trained 15,000 women, among whom 2,000 have been making Rs 25,000 to Rs 30,000 per month. "Due to the lack of time, guidance and the burden of responsibilities, women are unable to even step out of their homes. With Hunar, they have learnt the skills from the comfort of their homes, where they are also taught how to start a business," Nishtha tells The New Indian Express.