Earlier this year Women in Cloud joined the EQUALS Global Partnership, which brings together more than 90 stakeholders including, governments, private sector, United Nation entities, academia and not-for-profit organizations to accelerate efforts towards bridging the gender digital divide and fostering gender equality in the digital age.
Last week, we were happy to announce that our very own Co-founder and President, Chaitra Vedullapalli joined forces with the International Trade Centre (ITC) to deliver a SheTrades Invest course webinar in support of EQUALS.
The SheTrades Invest course is a 5-part webinar series designed by ITC’s SheTrades Initiative to help women entrepreneurs succeed in the technology sector by improving their access to finance. The SheTrades initiative aims to connect 3 million women entrepreneurs and women-owned businesses to international markets by 2021. The initiative offers a blueprint of seven global actions to unlock markets for women as well as a web and mobile app for women entrepreneurs to connect to buyers, investors, and new markets.
On 23 June 2020, Chaitra Vedullapalli presented the fifth and final webinar in the course on the topic of, ‘How to get ready for corporate contracts: The art of winning & keeping enterprise customers’. Chaitra as the Co-founder of Meylah Corporation has had her ups and downs in the tech industry in terms of securing customers and contracts during her initial days and was well placed to share her learnings with course participants during the live 1.5-hour interactive webinar.
There are also other course webinars including , ‘Identifying the right financial instruments for your technology company’ co-hosted by Dr. Gitanjali Swamy, Managing Partner at IoTask & Representative to the EQUALS Leadership Coalition that can be accessed via the EQUALS website here.
The SheTrades Invest course on access to finance is very timely as the International Finance Corporation (IFC) estimates that MSMEs face a financing gap of approximately $5.2 trillion dollars annually. According to the World Bank, women led enterprises receive only 3 percent of all venture capital funding. The SheTrades invest course aims to close this gap by equipping women entrepreneurs with the skills, tools and knowledge to meet the needs of investors and securing financing.
Women in Cloud as a community is striving through the collaborative efforts of our partners and members. In this regard, we are extremely honored to contribute to the SheTrades Invest course webinar and the efforts of EQUALS Global Partnership and the International Trade Centre. Furthermore, to watch a recording of Chaitra’s session and access other webinars in support of EQUALS, please visit: https://www.equals.org/leadership-webinar.
