NITI Aayog's WEP to Host 5th WTI Award on March 21

By: WE Staff | Monday, 21 March 2022

The fifth edition of the Women Transforming India Awards (WTI) will be held on March 21, 2022, by NITI Aayog's Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP).

The WTI Awards will be presented to 75 women achievers as part of the Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav, which will commemorate India's 75th anniversary of independence.

The Awards will be presented by an equally exceptional group of women, including Kiran Bedi, former Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry; Lakshmi Puri, former Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations; Arundhati Bhattacharya, former Chairperson of State Bank of India; Dr Tessy Thomas, Director-General of Aeronautical Systems, DRDO; Salma Sultan, former news anchor at DD; Debjani Ghosh, President of NASSCOM; Dr Sangeeta Reddy, Joint Managing Director of Apollo Hospitals; Ila Arun, acclaimed singer; and Shivani Malik, Managing Director of Da Milano Leathers.

The event will also feature Karnam Malleswari, first Indian woman to win a medal in weightlifting in the 2000 Olympics; Shiny Wilson, Track and Field Athlete; Lovlina Borgohain, Tokyo Olympic medallist in boxing; Pranati Naik, a Tokyo 2020 Olympian gymnast and 2019 Asian Championship medalist; Mansi Joshi, World No. 1 para-badminton singles’ player in SL3; and Simranjit Kaur, a Tokyo 2020 Olympian and 2018 AIBA World Championship medalist, as well as female defence officers.

The ceremony will also include NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant and Senior Adviser Anna Roy, UN Resident Coordinator in India Shombi Sharp, and Kailash Kher, who wrote, composed, and sang the WEP anthem.

The Women Transforming India Awards are an annual initiative of the NITI Aayog to recognise the outstanding and ground-breaking efforts of India's female leaders and change-makers.

From October 1, 2021, to February 21, 2022, applications for the WTI Awards '21 were accepted in one or more of the following seven categories:

-Manufacturing Sector

-Non-manufacturing Sector

-Public and Community Service

-Financial Products enabling Economic Growth

-Digital Innovation

-Climate Action

-Promote Art, Culture and Handicrafts

The 75 honorees represent a variety of locations and industries and were chosen after a lengthy process that spanned many months. The honorees were chosen from nominations received on WEP as well as a search-and-select committee's shortlisting.

WEP is an aggregator platform that attempts to catalyse the entrepreneurial environment for women and alleviate information imbalance. The platform strives to develop industry links and raise awareness of current programmes and services in order to create a flourishing ecosystem for women-led businesses.

Over 900 women entrepreneurs have benefited from 77 programmes and events offered on the platform to date.

During Covid-19, the platform was involved in providing business support to women entrepreneurs through webinars and its Masking It Up campaign, which benefited women-led small companies in India that were negatively impacted.