AP Targets 5 Lakh Women Entrepreneurs with Holistic Ecosystem

By: Women Entrepreneurs Review Team | Tuesday, 6 October 2026

CM N. Chandrababu Naidu has directed officials to develop a holistic ecosystem for women entrepreneurs in Andhra Pradesh, setting a target of creating five lakh women entrepreneurs. As part of this strategy, efforts will be made to capitalise on the extensive SHG base in the state and help women shift from livelihood activities to viable enterprises which have better income generation capacity and market reach.

The Chief Minister reviewed the status of progress and action plan for five lakh women entrepreneur programme and ‘Swayam AP’ scheme with Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP) and Mission for Elimination of Poverty in Municipal Areas (MEPMA) officials.

Key Highlights:

• AP targets five lakh women entrepreneurs through a holistic business ecosystem
• Swayam AP to take DWCRA products to national and global markets
• National Saras Mela 2026 to showcase women-led businesses and products

CM Naidu talked about the vast extent and depth of SHG movement in Andhra Pradesh and its full exploitation for economic and enterprise development. He addressed hat products made by DWCRA women must be marketed beyond villages and region, and reach national and international consumers. This would require a stronger focus on commercialisation, including standardised quality, product innovation, attractive packaging, professional branding, digital sales channels and efficient supply-chain management.

The program will seek to transform the fragmented group of female producers into a coherent network of enterprises. The CM further instructed officers to encourage women who aspire for self-employment by providing franchise-based opportunities. Franchise business will give the aspiring entrepreneurs an organized start by offering them a tried-and-tested business concept, along with training and guidelines to follow.

He instructed the officials to develop ‘wayam AP as a scalable platform for business run by women by bringing under a single brand umbrella, thousands of products that have been made by DWCRA women. The proposed model aims at addressing the problems being faced by the rural producers through the combination of production aggregation with quality assurance, packaging, branding, and organized distribution.

Further, he has asked the officials to take ‘National Saras Mela 2026’ to be held at Vijayawada during October 15-31 as the flagship platform for demonstrating the economic role of women entrepreneurs. He recommended making the gathering of women entrepreneurs along with women members of parliament from all over the country to make this event a platform for networking, knowledge exchange and market exploration.

The event will bring SHGs from all over India, with 600 stalls and nearly one lakh attendees every day. Participants can gain insights about customer preferences, develop customer relations, identify business partners and increase brand equity through the event. The event’s inauguration by President Droupadi Murmu, would make this event a platform for the nation.

A well-thought-out and holistic framework has been set up to promote entrepreneurship among women using financial inclusion, institution building, skill enhancement, and marketing. The scheme has been designed keeping in mind the key priorities; establishment of continual system for women entrepreneurs, opportunity creation, financial generation with loan assistance of ₹68,585 crore for strengthening women-led enterprises.

The extent of financial intervention is an equally important issue. Stree Nidhi has made loans worth ₹4,800 crore to 4.73 lakh women, enabling entrepreneurs to have capital that can facilitate enterprise development and growth.