WE HUB: Where women work wonders

New Indian Express

15-05-2025

She is the kind of leader who leads with both heart and resolve, proving that true power lies in lifting others as you rise. A quiet force of determination, Sita Pallacholla blends strength with empathy. As the CEO of WE HUB — India's first and only state-led incubator for women entrepreneurs — she doesn't just break barriers, but builds pathways for others to follow. In an insightful conversation with CE, she reveals what WE HUB is doing for urban, rural, and tribal women, apart from giving much-needed entrepreneurship tips.
Excerpts
What inspired you to champion the cause of women entrepreneurs?
My journey began in the trenches of entrepreneurship, where I learned the challenges of building from scratch and saw how unforgiving the system can be, especially for women.
In 2011, after moving to Singapore, I connected with women leaders globally. Despite different geographies, the same roadblocks emerged — women were navigating a landscape not designed for them.
In 2014, I launched The Angel Summit, a network bringing together women from various sectors. These conversations led to real outcomes: gender-forward policies, women-led incubators, and inclusive economic pathways.
Today, I work at the intersection of technology, gender, and inclusive economics, building scalable systems to support women-led businesses, especially in emerging markets. At WE Hub, my mission is to ensure women not only enter the room but shape it.
Can you highlight a few ongoing programmes catering to women in urban, rural, and tribal areas?
At WE HUB, we don't believe a one-size-fits-all approach works when you're building for the next generation of women entrepreneurs and leaders.
In the urban vertical, our work spans across education, early-stage entrepreneurship, and scale-up journeys. Three core programmes anchor this vertical:
WE Enable: Focused on young women in colleges, this programme is about planting the seed early — building entrepreneurial thinking, industry exposure, and leadership skills to create career-ready women who don't just seek jobs, but create them.
WE Engage: This is our flagship entrepreneurship programme, structured to meet women where they are in their startup journey.
WE Elevate: This programme caters to growth-stage founders and MSMEs — providing targeted interventions, access to markets, mentors, and institutional investors. It's designed to support entrepreneurs ready to move from survival to scale.
Our Social Impact & Entrepreneurship (SIE) vertical recognises that women in Tier-2, Tier-3, and tribal regions have different starting points. Here, we design programmes supporting women-led businesses across the entire entrepreneurial life cycle, from ideation to scale-up:
WE Reach: A three-month pre-incubation programme providing skills in business management, financial, and digital literacy, concluding with Udyam registration support.
Project Inclusion: A six-month incubation programme offering expert sessions, branding, financial linkages, and business registration support for MSMEs.
WE Leads: A 10-month acceleration programme for growth-stage women-led MSMEs, focusing on revenue growth, market diversification, and national and international expansion.
WE HUB is also setting up district-level Women Centres of Excellence (WCEs). The proposed districts are: Warangal, Hanumakonda, Peddapalli, and Nalgonda. These centres will serve as local hubs for empowering women by offering skill development training, entrepreneurial capacity building, and manufacturing support across various sectors.