Women on the Web (WOW) is a global series of meets, events, speakers, and trainings aiming to empower women around the globe to start and grow their businesses using technology, entrepreneurship and networking.
The community-led initiative by KIIT e-cell is powered by Google Business Group, Bhubaneswar, a community also for entrepreneurs who come together to share business and technical knowledge.
The yearlong curriculum targets on projects, sessions and events on building a web presence for first-time users to advanced content on measuring web traffic and advertising etc.
launched by Ashesh Das, a marketing and strategic member of KIIT e-cell and a student of KIIT University, the initiative has already become viral and popular among the youth and women and has started its work in a dedicated and real time strategic manner in and around Bhubaneswar.
Partly a social network and partly a support system, WOW builds around a community of women-run businesses (or businesses who have at least a female co-founder) to provide collaborative learning covering various Web technologies, engaging with customers, promoting business and optimizing the online space. Not to mix up brands too much, it’s sort of an eBay for social innovation.
WOW founder Das says, “I’ll refrain from commenting on its success and work culture because it’s just too new and too fascinating in its current nascent stage. I will be following WOW’s progress, and document developments.
Given the smaller scope and scale of so many businesses (especially those founded in rural areas), this could, at very least, bring women entrepreneurs into the building where the glass ceiling is only still cracking.
Our motto would be creating small mentors within ourselves and also to create a very willing and a varied kind of work culture which not only makes the students independent but also keeps them connected and motivated in the WOW team. Our motto involves a lot of subjects with respect to women and its empowerment, but now the motto is pretty much clear of bringing the presence of women to technology and web, because the amount of knowledge moreover the substantial knowledge a person gets through web is huge. And we hope to change the statistics of 20 per cent of women in India getting access to internet to a very decent figure by developing such initiatives.”