An international NGO will soon help Indian women-owned businesses gain a foothold in global supply chains
WEConnect International, an international non-profit organisation, is now launching its programmes in India and China, following successful launches in Canada and Europe. The organisation helps women’s business enterprises develop their capacity to grow by enabling them to participate in the global value chain. It is present in the US also, as WBENC.
The WEConnect International network represents over $700 billion in annual purchasing power. Founding members include Accenture, Alcatel-Lucent, AT&T, Boeing, Cisco Systems, Citigroup, Ernst & Young, HP, IBM, Intel, Manpower, Motorola, Pfizer, PG&E and Wal-Mart.
Their ‘supplier diversity’ programmes have enabled them to build links with WEConnect-certified women’s businesses. WEConect is now launching its presence in India with a certification programme. It will certify that firms are at least 51 per cent owned, managed and controlled by one or more women.
Women-owned businesses represent 25-33 per cent of all private businesses in the world, but represent less than 1 per cent of all vendors to corporations or governments, according to the World Bank. WEConnect International was co-founded by Virginia Littlejohn and Elizabeth Vazquez to empower women’s businesses.
Littlejohn is CEO and co-founder of Quantum Leaps, a global facilitator of women’s entrepreneurship. Vazquez is CEO of WEConnect International.
WEConnect International certifies women-owned businesses according to international norms and connects them to Fortune 500 companies, a global partner network, and other women-owned businesses. This work is supported by a network of global corporations that source products and services from WBENC-certified companies in the US and WEConnect International-certified companies in Canada and Europe. India and China will now be added to this network.
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Diversity and inclusion is recognised as a core business strategy in many countries, and sourcing a percentage of overall procurement from women suppliers is a growing component of business strategy among leading global corporations.
As part of its India initiative, WEConnect has teamed up with the World Bank’s Private Sector Leadership Forum, the International Trade Center and corporates like Accenture, Wal-Mart and Staples to work with SEWA on a pilot to promote sustained employment for women-owned cooperatives to market their products to large corporations.
The WEConnect-SEWA project is rehabilitating women rag pickers and training them to make recycled paper products, which can be marketed and sold through retail organisations like Wal-Mart, Staples and Giftlinks. The training efforts are focused on teaching women capacity building, quality control and being competitive.
Arathi Laxman, who is managing the SEWA pilot project in India for WEConnect, said that this model was helping to create a hybrid supply chain linking the bottom of the pyramid with the global value chain, “and we are hoping that when proven, this model can be replicated into other industries and geographies.”
In both emerging markets and developed countries, women entrepreneurs encounter gender-specific obstacles that cannot be easily overcome without the intervention of the public, private and NGO sectors, Laxman added. “Their focused efforts will go a long way toward helping women build strong and vibrant businesses,” she said.
In India, Ernst and Young (E&Y) will conduct the certification process to ensure that a given company is indeed a woman-owned company and meets all other criteria. This will obviate the need for companies to spend resources on checking if it is a women-owned business.