Britannia Marie Gold My Startup Initiative touches nearly 40 Lakh Indian women

With a vision to fuel the entrepreneurial aspirations of India’s homemakers, Britannia Industries, India’s No.1 Bakery Foods Company announced the top 10 winners of its renowned Marie Gold My Startup Initiative season 3. Under this initiative, the 10 winners were felicitated and awarded INR 10 Lakhs each to kick-start their business ventures. Gracing the felicitation ceremony were Mr. Amit Doshi, Chief Marketing Officer, Britannia Industries Ltd, and Ms. Sairee Chahal Founder, SHEROES & Mahila Money.

Britannia Marie Gold My Startup initiative is a platform for aspiring homemakers to become financially independent and transform themselves into ’Womenpreneurs’. The shortlisted candidates of Season 3.0 showcased their ideas virtually to an eminent jury that comprised leading ‘Womenpreneurs’ such as Sairee Chahal, Rashmi Bansal, Renu Shah, Aakansha Bhargava, Aarti Mohan, Ruchika Bhuwalka, Latha Chandramuli, and Piya Bahadur. The jury also consisted of eminent media personalities and the leadership team from Britannia.

The Britannia Marie Gold My Startup contest season 3 went live in September 2021 and has received an overwhelming response of more than 13 Lakh entries, from homemakers with diverse business ideas from across the country. Applicants could register their entries via telephone calls, websites, and WhatsApp. The brand witnessed the largest number of entries from Maharashtra at 20 percent followed by Tamil Nadu and West Bengal.

As noted in the survey by Britannia and Momspresso, 77% of homemakers who desire to set up their own ventures, consider technology as an enabler in this journey. Acknowledging technology as the biggest enabler for women entrepreneurs, season 3 of the Britannia Marie Gold My Startup initiative has provided digital skilling to homemakers in collaboration with Google. All participants have been provided free access to a set of Google’s digital and business skilling resources in 6 languages-– Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Bengali, and English.

Many winners of the past 2 seasons of Marie Gold My Startup are today running successful ventures in diverse fields such as Restaurants, computer training institutes, personal care products, tailoring, and so on. Most of them employ other women in their ventures, thus providing the much-desired cascade effect.

Mr. Amit Doshi, Chief Marketing Officer, Britannia Industries Ltd. said, “The Sixth Economic Census stated that women only constitute 13.76% of the total entrepreneurs, i.e., 8.05 million out of the 58.5 million entrepreneurs in the country. Through the Britannia Marie Gold My Startup initiative, our goal is to celebrate homemakers and fuel their ideas in order to make them independent and successful entrepreneurs. With nearly 48% of India’s population comprising women, they can play a very important role to become catalysts of change. We at Britannia strongly believe when women move forward, the entire family progresses. And when families progress, the country progresses. Empowering India’s women is not a choice, it is an absolute necessity. With a third successful season wrapping up, we are privileged to have provided this platform to over 3.8 million homemakers to present powerful entrepreneurial ideas with a chance to transform themselves into business owners and job creators.’’

Resonating with the Marie Gold My Startup Campaign philosophy on empowering homemakers, Sairee Chahal, Founder, SHEROES, and Mahila Money has stepped forward to lend support to aspiring women entrepreneurs. “Sufficient access to capital, and a friendly, accessible financial ecosystem, are key resources in the journey of a successful woman entrepreneur. The Britannia Marie Gold My Startup Challenge is a phenomenal opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs to turn their aspirations and skills into marketable businesses. We at Mahila Money are extremely proud to support the winners of the challenge, with a hassle-free loan experience that meets their credit needs. I believe our cohort of winners have the potential to build the businesses of the future, and we look forward to offering them continued support, through Mahila Money's carefully curated financial ecosystem.” she stated.