WEQ or Women Entrepreneurship Quest is a program property of AnitaB.org India. Every year, 10 women founders from the country are taken on an all expense paid trip to Silicon Valley as part of the program. The program is supported by Department of Science & Technology (DST), Government of India and Indo-U.S. Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF).
WEQ 2018 is the 7th edition and I have been associated with the program since the 2016 edition as a consultant. The program over the years has attracted some of the brightest tech founders in the country and today can boast of having a very strong alumni network. The list of previous winners can be viewed from the Rethink Wiki page of WEQ.
Applications to WEQ 2018 are being invited now. The deadline for submission of Stage 1 application is 30th of September 2018. Stage 1 application is what is open now — it essentially is an interest / qualifying form and would take only 2 minutes to submit. Participants who qualify to Stage 2 will then be required to provide more information. Shortlisted participants may have a video interview and the 25 finalists will be invited to Bangalore to present. More information on the program available on the WEQ 2018 official website. Link to application is bit.ly/WEQ2018.
I had also done a brief advocacy Live covering the brief aspects of the program. The video is available in the AnitaB.org FB page and is also embedded below for ease of reference.
As part of advocacy initiatives, every year since the 2015 edition, we have had previous winners come on FB Live and share their WEQ experience. The Lives are a part of WEQ advocacy and happen during the last week of the application phase. It is happening this year as well and we have have 3 Lives done so far — Meghna Saraogi of StyleDotMe, Supriya Rathi Bagri of RoboVR and Madhulika of Survaider. Between today and Sunday we have another 4 more of our WEQ founder doing their Lives — Kausambi Manjita of Kubric, Pallavi Bishnoi of RealTimeRenewables, Monika Shukla of LetsEndorse and Bhavjot Kaur of Clinikk. All Lives happen on the AnitaB.org India FB Page at 4pm — bit.ly/weqlives
FB Live Schedule — 28th Sep to 30th Sep
The Lives are a great resource for anyone who wishes to understand more about WEQ and also for those who wish to learn from some of the best women founders in the country on how they went about building their startups into strong dynamic organisations. All Lives, including the ones from previous years, have been organised as playlists and can be located from the videos section.