VTU launches ‘She Innovates’ programme to promote women-led startups

Bengaluru: The Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) has launched a programme called ‘She Innovates’ to encourage women entrepreneurs in its affiliated colleges.

The initiative, designed as an entrepreneurship and incubation programme for pre-final-year female students at VTU, has already attracted over 5,000 registrations.

The programme aims to help create 100 women-led startups within one year.

It has been launched under the university’s Visvesvaraya Research and Innovation Foundation (VRIF).

The initiative is being supported by ecosystem partners Wipro, JAN AI, UN Women, Karnataka Digital Economy Mission (KDEM), and the TiE (The Institution of Engineers) chapters of Hubballi, Bengaluru, Mangaluru and Mysuru.

During the launch event held on Saturday, Madan Padaki, the founder of JAN AI, highlighted the country’s opportunity to build locally relevant artificial intelligence pathways and partner-driven deployments to address the socio-economic challenges at the rural and district levels.

Representing Wipro, Sanjeev Jain, chief operating officer, expressed enthusiasm for expanding generative AI innovation to rural India and described the initiative as timely and impactful.

The CEO announced Wipro’s commitment across four key engagement pillars: conducting the Yukti Manthan hackathons, training the students in problem-solving and in innovation, providing mentorship from the Wipro employees and in offering joint certification for the programme participants.

The company also emphasised long-term campus engagement and continued collaboration with VTU’s VRIF.

Seven-step model

Further elaborating on the programme’s execution framework, Manoj Madhusudhan, global head of AI and Data Decision Intelligence at Wipro, presented the seven-step ‘She Innovates’ execution model.

The initial phases include registration and problem capture, AI-assisted discovery of problem statements, and formation of cross-college teams.

He said the programme will include technical onboarding using platforms such as Hugging Face and Gradio, followed by structured hackathons, evaluation and shortlisting, and incubation or acceleration pathways for selected teams to ensure continuity and startup development.

Growing enrolment

VTU Vice-Chancellor Vidyashankar highlighted the growing enrolment of women in engineering and stressed the need to nurture women entrepreneurs. He urged industry partners to actively support Tier-2 and Tier-3 colleges so that students can address real problems from rural India and build grassroots innovations.

Santosh Ittanagi of VTU’s VRIF, Asma Sudhakar from Wipro, Atanu Batabyal, and Manoj Menon from Head Held High Foundation were present in the programme.