Latest news with #EWE
Hindustan Times
08-05-2025
- Business
- Hindustan Times
Digital education can bridge inequality and shape the future
The EWE program empowers rural women entrepreneurs across India, providing skills, training, and financial literacy. Through initiatives like Gauri's sewing collective and Smita's beauty parlor, women are transforming their lives, driving economic growth, and challenging systemic barriers.
Hindustan Times
07-05-2025
- Business
- Hindustan Times
Empowering women entrepreneurs to lead economic transformation
We often discuss India's economic trajectory through numbers and milestones—Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth, infrastructure investments, workforce projections. But a recent conversation brought home a truth I have long believed--spreadsheets track progress, but people define it. Women entrepreneurs (representational image)(Pixabay) I was reminded of this when I recently read about Gauri from UP's Shravasti district. Her story captures the quiet revolution powering India toward the Viksit Bharat vision. Like millions of women in rural India, Gauri's life was a cycle of survival. With a family to support and her husband's daily wage stretched thin, her sewing talent remained untapped. In 2022, she enrolled in Empowering Women Entrepreneurs (EWE) programme, a three-year partnership between Visa and United Way Mumbai, that equipped her with a sewing machine and offered her training in the basics of business and overall financial literacy. Today, she runs a sewing collective, mentoring village girls to stitch garments and steward them to better futures. Gauri's journey is one of 11,000 such underserved women entrepreneurs that EWE has connected with across over 360 villages in UP, Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Assam. Last month, when I visited a program centre in Mumbai's suburbs, I met one of them, Smita, who has turned ₹ 50 beauty tutorials into a thriving parlour. Her monthly income of ₹ 25,000 is not just a number—it is her children's education, her parents' health care, and her community's roadmap to financial independence. India's economic narrative is shifting - women now drive 41.7% of the workforce and lead 20% of MSMEs, employing over 25 million. Beneath these milestones lies a reality often overlooked: struggle and progress coexist. Take the story of Revati from Assam's Muduki village. When her husband's health failed, financial survival fell on her shoulders. Her answer came through goat rearing—a skill she honed with training in livestock management and financial literacy from EWE. Today, her herd has grown, inching her closer to becoming a Lakhpati Kisan, with an annual income of ₹ 1 lakh. Her journey underscores a larger truth - when women prosper, communities thrive. Bain & Company estimates India needs 400 million working women to realise its economic potential but faces a 145-million shortfall. The hurdles? Limited credit access, fractured market linkages, lack of financial know-how, and entrenched stigma. The EWE programme addresses this through peer-led financial literacy training, seed funding for Self-Help Groups (SHGs), and startup (Saksham) kits that turn skills into sustainable businesses. This creates self-sustaining ecosystems where skills translate into sustainable livelihoods. The stories of Gauri, Smita, and Revati highlight that financial literacy alone is not enough. It requires dismantling systemic barriers and democratising access to digital tools for budgeting and formal banking, bridging the $158 billion credit gap with financing models attuned to informal incomes, and linking grassroots entrepreneurs to markets through e-commerce and government schemes. The success of such social-impact programmes lies in their multiplier effects. Smita's parlour now employs three women from her neighbourhood, while Gauri's sewing collective has doubled school enrolment for girls in her village. These micro-impacts, when scaled, become macro-solutions fostering growth and sustained progress. Empowerment cannot be a checkbox--it demands consistent commitment to nurturing skills, expanding credit access, and amplifying market opportunities. Time and again, public-private partnerships demonstrate how collaborative approaches create sustainable models for women's empowerment. The data is clear--investing in women entrepreneurs could create 150-170 million jobs by 2030, adding $700 billion to global GDP. Beyond numbers, it is the human stories that resonate and transform societies. When Revati speaks of her goats as family, or Smita shares how her income restored her father's pride, we are reminded that economic empowerment is deeply personal. Gauri's training centre, Smita's parlour, and Revati's livestock—each adding another thread in India's ongoing progress. As we stride onward to 2047, the question is not whether we can afford to invest in women, it is whether we can afford not to. This article is authored by Sandeep Ghosh, group country Manage, Visa India & South.
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
NEUMAN & ESSER Receives Order for Hydrogen Storage Project in Northern Germany
The energy service provider EWE is driving forward the conversion of its gas storage site in Wesermarsch for the storage of hydrogen. NEUMAN & ESSER will supply EWE with two four-crank, horizontal piston compressors size 320 as part of the major four-part 'Clean Hydrogen Coastline' project. These compressors form a central component for future large-scale hydrogen storage in a converted natural gas cavern. EWE aims to store hydrogen in this from 2027. From that time, the green gas will be available when it is needed, not when it is produced. Large-scale hydrogen storage will thus improve the secure and flexible supply of future hydrogen users. The project is an essential step towards integrating green hydrogen technology into the existing energy infrastructure and a key project for the energy transition. NEUMAN & ESSER and EWE are thus jointly making a significant contribution to the security of supply and the ramp-up of a hydrogen economy. 'We are very pleased that we can make a decisive contribution to the development of the green hydrogen economy in Germany by supplying the centerpiece of the hydrogen storage facility,' says Jens Wulff, Managing Director of NEUMAN & ESSER Deutschland, 'and that the funding commitments made by the German government and the state of Lower Saxony last summer for the EWE 'Clean Hydrogen Coastline' project have paved the way for strategically important projects such as this one. The signing of the contract with EWE shows our determination to realize these major projects quickly.' EWE is converting one of seven underground natural gas caverns at its cavern site in Huntorf in the Wesermarsch region for the storage of hydrogen. The Huntorf project is part of the large-scale 'Clean Hydrogen Coastline' project. This brings together the production, storage, transportation, and use of green hydrogen, and thus implements the political requirements. EWE received the funding approval for the four-part large-scale project as part of the European IPCEI program (Important Project of Common European Interest) in summer 2024. EWE is currently in the detailed planning phase and intends to store and release hydrogen in the next two to three years. The awarding of the compressors to NEUMAN & ESSER is a decisive milestone in the realization of the project. The family business was chosen for its extensive experience and technical expertise. The compressors play a central role in storing and releasing hydrogen from the cavern, ensuring maximum safety and efficiency. EWE has proven that hydrogen can be stored safely in salt caverns in a pilot project at its gas storage site in Rüdersdorf near Berlin. EWE is now applying the knowledge gained from the construction and operation of the 500 cubic meter test cavern to caverns with a volume 1,000 times larger, such as the one in Wesermarsch. 'Our aim is to establish large-scale caverns for hydrogen storage. With 37 salt caverns, EWE alone has 15 percent of all German cavern storage facilities that are suitable for storing hydrogen,' says Peter Schmidt, Managing Director of EWE GASSPEICHER. About NEUMAN & ESSER At NEUMAN & ESSER the long experience with gas compression and mechanical processing solutions builds the foundation for technologies required for a decarbonized society. We are spearheading the energy transition and the circular economy with integrated solutions as an OEM for: piston and diaphragm compressors, electrolyzers and reformer technologies, grinding and classifying plants. Family-owned for almost 200 years, today more than 1,500 employees are committed to bringing challenging projects to life around the world – from evaluating project feasibility, through engineering, construction, and commissioning to digitally supported 360° service during operation. NEUMAN & ESSER is the partner of the industry for a future with energy from renewable sources and sustainable raw materials. Further information on NEUMAN & ESSER solutions can be found at About EWE As an innovative service provider, EWE is active in the business areas of energy, telecommunications and information technology. With over 10,800 employees and a turnover of ten billion euros in 2023, EWE is one of the largest energy companies in Germany. Headquartered in Oldenburg, Lower Saxony, the company is predominantly in municipal hands. It supplies around 1.4 million customers in northwest Germany, Brandenburg and Rügen with electricity, 0.7 million with natural gas and 0.7 million with telecommunications services. EWE plays a pioneering role in the areas of security of supply, climate protection and digital participation. To this end, the Group is investing in the expansion of the electricity grids, the expansion of the optical fiber infrastructure, the construction of new wind turbines and is a leader in the expansion of the hydrogen infrastructure in the coming years. Find out more about EWE at
