StrongHer Ventures and WeWork Labs opened applications for startups for their “Arise” Accelerator program. StrongHer Ventures is the world’s largest diversity platform for women VCs and entrepreneurs. They are in partnership with WeWork Labs, the leading flexible workspace provider. The Accelerator engages the entire women-led innovation ecosystem. This includes corporate leaders, founders, talent, mentors, hands-on masterclasses, investors and client connects.
Applications are now open to all pre-Seed women-led and women-focused startups. Some categories are fintech, health, future of work/life, consumer, and Web 3.0. Two people committed to leading the Arise Accelerator are the founder of StrongHer Ventures, Anika Vashistha, and Arvind Radhakrishnan, the head of WeWork Labs India.
Details on the Arise Accelerator
Arise brings together the benefits of StrongHer Ventures’ extensive investment expertise and global investor network along with WeWork Labs’ global acceleration platform. General partners of StrongHer Ventures have a track record of generating unicorns and multifold returns. The program will engage with 5,000 startups, mentor 1,000 entrepreneurs and invest in over 200 startups. It will impact engagement and empowerment of over a million women in the country. This will result in a 5x increase in funding for women entrepreneurs. Essentially doubling the number of women leaders across the impacted group of women, and a 50 percent reduction in the gender pay gap. Arise expects to add $1.5 billion to the country’s women-led economy (GDP).
“The Arise program by StrongHer Ventures and WeWork Labs is leading the way to triple the number of women entrepreneurs who get funded and increase women in leadership positions by 50 percent,” said Ms. Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Executive Chairperson, Biocon & Biocon Biologics.
What does Arise offer?
Apart from capital investment, Arise will offer women entrepreneurs benefits. They include knowledge sessions, boot camps, sector experts, engaged mentoring, curated networking events, hiring drives, warm client connections, access to follow-on capital, highly subsidized WeWork spaces and up to $1M worth of benefits and valuation impact.
Know anyone involved?
Arise brings in engagement from industry leaders and successful entrepreneurs like Kiran Mazumdar Shaw (Biocon), Kirthiga Reddy (WeWork), Deepak Parekh (HDFC Bank), Upasana Taku (MobiKwik), Neha Motwani (Fitternity/CureFit), Bhavna Suresh (10Club), Ganesh Natarajan (Ex Zensar), Anisha Patnaik (LexStart) and Avinash Vashistha (Former Chairman & MD, Accenture), among several others.
Mr. Deepak S. Parekh, Chairman, HDFC Ltd., said, “Ankita Vashistha has created an enabling platform for women entrepreneurs who are an important untapped source for India’s economic growth StrongHer has forged immense opportunities such as increasing female labor participation, closing the gender pay gap and fostering innovation.”
The end goal:
Arise will immerse startups in competitive strategy, design, marketing, operations, and fundraising. This all leads to a 1:1 investor meeting and Demo day. After the Demo Day, StrongHer Ventures will continue to engage with the startups to guide them through the subsequent rounds of funding for future growth.
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