How Google is Helping Women Entrepreneurs in India

By | 29 March, 2012

Google isn’t just pulling Shah Rukh Khan for its Google+ hangouts. It’s actually reaching out to people who need it the most and helping them. Google is piloting Women Entrepreneurship on Web (WeOW) in India and has quite a few case studies to show case.

 

The WeOW program is divided into five different circles and the entrepreneurs can choose which circle to get into. Some might need all five. Here are the five circles which have helped women entrepreneurs to launch a website, collaborate and optimize their online presence.

  1. Building an online presence: creating a website, a YouTube channel, and a business page on a social network like Google+
  2. Collaborating effectively: tools like Gmail, Calendar and Docs
  3. Connecting with customers: hosting Google+ Hangouts, creating and distributing targeted offers and discounts
  4. Promoting your organization: online product demos, creating viral videos on YouTube, advertising through AdWords and AdSense
  5. Tracking and optimizing your online presence: Google Analytics, Google Alerts, ripples on Google+, the +1 button, webmaster tools

Fountainhead School founder Meghana Musunuri is one the early adopters, and has been using Google’s WeOW and its Google+ service to manage the school activities. Meghana has hosted Google+ hangouts with the students and the parents. I’m not sure what exactly the hangouts are used for but I can definitely see great potential to this.

Instead of lining up for the parent-teacher-meetings, Maybe we can just have a Google+ hangout. That saves us all a whole bunch of time. I hope that’s what Fountainhead school is using it for. The school even has a Google+ page.

There are several other women entrepreneurs who have used Google WeOW program successfully. Some of the success stories : coverup.in, right2walk.com, makeourtrip.com, colordearth.blogspot.in, swansuites.com, anaghadesigns.com, fernandezhospital.com and colorquill.com.

The video shows participants Here’s talking about their experience.

Call it social responsibility or publicity, Google has done quite a bit of service in India. It has launched Google Bus which has traveled the hinterlands of India to create awareness about the Internet. Many Indians have tasted Internet first on the Google bus. Then it has launched free web hosting facility for Indian SME’s.

With WeOW, Google has taken it to a whole new level. There is nothing in the program which has to be specific for women. But as the Google’s blog post title says, may be this is provide to be the springboard for women. Men need it too but may be they will get it later.

PS : MakeOurtrip is an interesting word play on MakeMyTrip.com. The domain has expired though.

Via Google Blog



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