Empowering Women through Entrepreneurship
Open Online Courses, for a long time, have received the type of attention that is mostly inferior to the mainstream mode of offline teaching and learning. While the “anytime-anywhere-learning” mantra certainly caught the attention of many, it still did not help in increasing the number of learners who dedicatedly stuck with a course till the end. Thus, the global average MOOC completion rate has remained as a single-digit percentage. However, IIM Bangalore has created a new record with a massive 48% completion rate in its online course delivered as part of a Women Entrepreneurship Program, hinting at the immense possibilities to tap in the digital learning space.
This massive participation was recorded as part of the “Empowering Women through Entrepreneurship Program” launched by National Commission for Women (NCW) wherein IIMB’s action-oriented online course “Do Your Venture: Entrepreneurship for Everyone” was used for training the participants in Entrepreneurship. Ideated and designed to promote economic independence among women through Entrepreneurship, the program received applications from women from across the country and was to be delivered in two phases – Online Training by IIMB and then Incubation by India SME Forum in the second phase.
Out of the 6000+ applications received 1780 applicants joined the first batch, which began in April 2021. After 7 weeks of rigorous training in entrepreneurship, the course ended on June 15th with 855 business plan submissions from early-stage, women-led businesses spanning across sectors. This rate of completion can be attributed to the active involvement and participation from learners resulting from having a tangible goal to focus on, having a dedicated course-team for support, having motivated group of peers to inspire, and mostly- from having a strong business idea to believe in!
Currently, as mentors from IIMB are perusing through these submissions to select the ones that make it to the second phase, IIMB digital learning team is gearing up to welcome the second batch of entrepreneurs and their powerful ideas.
