The Nasscom Foundation established a call centre with Google and partnered with the non-profit ISAP to help women farmers grow their businesses.

Nidhi Bhasin, CEO of Nasscom Foundation, said at the launch of the “DigiVaani Call Centre” that the project is running on a pilot basis and will initially reach 20,000 rural women entrepreneurs in six states – Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana and Rajasthan.”

“DigiVaani will be a place where rural women entrepreneurs can call and get information about various programmes that can help them expand their business, whether it’s a government programme or any other information that helps them. The call centre will also proactively provide them with information about rural data on women entrepreneurs,” Bhasin said.

She said that the project, funded by Google, will decide within a year to expand DigiVaani. DigiVaani call centres have been set up at the Delhi and Lucknow offices of the Indian Society of Agribusiness Professionals (ISAP), with 19 employees.

Google VP Sapna Chadha, Indian Marketing and Southeast Asia said: “Google.org, Google’s philanthropic arm, has awarded $500,000 to the Nasscom Foundation to promote female entrepreneurship. As female labour force participation declines, we realise that the next leap must be female entrepreneurship”.

She said that a study by Google and Bain Capital suggests that women-owned businesses could contribute more than a quarter of labour needs over the next 30 to 40 years.