The We Can India! project was a groundbreaking collaboration between Dhriiti and the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, with support from the American Embassy. This initiative focused on promoting and strengthening women entrepreneurship across Northern India, specifically in Delhi, Jaipur, Lucknow, Dehradun, and Chandigarh.

Combining the Cherie Blair Foundation’s expertise in mentoring with Dhriiti’s deep understanding of the Indian entrepreneurship landscape created an ideal synergy. This partnership allowed us to develop a comprehensive approach to entrepreneurship incubation and acceleration specifically tailored for women in peri-urban and semi-urban contexts – a segment we were working with for the first time.

Our work with these entrepreneurs challenged prevalent misconceptions about women entrepreneurs in India. While often perceived as “privileged” or “urban,” our experience revealed that these women faced deeply rooted gender-based discrimination that created significant barriers to their entrepreneurial journeys.

Our research uncovered two critical challenges facing women entrepreneurs:

1. Internal negotiation: Women struggled to balance their roles as mothers, daughters, and wives with their identities as entrepreneurs.
2. Lack of true mentorship: While women received advice and instructions, they rarely experienced genuine mentoring.

These insights led us to design specialized interventions for women entrepreneurship, developing core tenets that now inform all our gender-focused programs.

Our outreach efforts yielded an overwhelming response – 256 applications from across the five target locations. This surprising response highlighted that women entrepreneurs existed in significant numbers but were often isolated and needed to be actively reached out to, rather than expected to seek support independently.

The project pioneered several innovative mentoring methodologies:

• City-based cohorts
• Micro-peer groups
• Peer group mentoring in business contexts
• Community building through regular meetings, trainings, and weekend gatherings

The project structure was as follows:

• Out of the applications received, 125 women entrepreneurs were selected for business workshops and training across five states
• 82 presented business plans after training
• 76 were selected for specialized mentoring with 22 expert mentors from diverse fields
• 26 finalists were chosen for the incubation phase
• 5 winners were selected based on elevator pitches and program participation, announced at the WE Can India finale in October 2017 at the American Centre Delhi
• The top 10 participants received specialized training from international facilitators

The most significant impacts of the project were transformational:

• Participants began recognizing themselves as entrepreneurs
• Their communities and networks acknowledged their entrepreneurial identities
• Several participants have since become recognized speakers in entrepreneurship circuits

This project established the foundation for Dhriiti’s approach to gender-focused entrepreneurship development that continues to inform our work today.