The program is designed as an entrepreneurship and incubation initiative for penultimate year female students of Visvesvaraya University of Technology. | Photo credit: FILE PHOTO
Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) has launched the ‘She Innovates’ initiative to promote entrepreneurship among penultimate year female engineering students across its affiliated institutions through the Visvesvaraya Research and Innovation Foundation (VRIF).
The program is conceived as a business and incubation initiative for female students of the penultimate year of VTU and has already attracted over 5,000 registrations.
The program aims to create 100 female-led start-ups within one year, supporting a new generation of female founders from tech campuses. This initiative is jointly supported by leading ecosystem partners including Wipro, JAN AI, UN Women, Karnataka Digital Economy Mission (KDEM) and TiE offices in Hubballi, Bengaluru, Mangaluru and Mysuru.
There are 220 technical colleges within VTU with more than 300,000 enrolled students. Eighty girls from each college will be able to register for this program. A problem-solving competition at various levels will be organized for students.
Ultimately 100 students will be selected for this project. VTU will serve as a platform for large-scale implementation of projects developed by students by providing financial assistance for prototype models.
The main objective of this program is to provide solutions to social and economic problems at the rural and district level using Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology.
S. Vidyashankar, Vice-Chancellor, VTU, said, “We have designed this program to recognize and nurture the talent of female students. We will give priority to those from rural areas. Several companies have come forward to help us in this. The selected students will also get mentors.”
Several tech companies such as Wipro have expressed strong enthusiasm for extending generative AI innovations to rural India. Wipro also highlighted the campus’s long-term involvement and continued collaboration with VTU’s VRIF.
Sanjeev Jain, Chief Operating Officer, Wipro, announced Wipro’s commitment to four key pillars of engagement in the ‘She Innovates’ programme: conducting Yukti Manthan hackathons, training students in problem solving and innovation, providing mentorship from Wipro employees and offering joint certification for program participants. He further explained that the program will include technical onboarding using platforms such as Hugging Face and Gradio, followed by a structured phase of hackathon execution, evaluation and shortlisting, and finally incubation or acceleration paths for selected teams to ensure continuity and development of start-ups.
Published – 15 March 2026 18:51 IST
