Team Members: Saurabh Agarwal, MPA Candidate, Harvard Kennedy School
Prem Ramaswami, MBA Candidate, Harvard Business School
As India’s first women only technology space, iSpace for Women seeks to empower women by providing a technology enabled safe environment along with education support. Their proposal involves setting up a center with cyber café facilities for women and gradually move up the value chain to an incubation center. Cyber cafes are not frequented by women due safety and cleanliness issues, specifically involving the usage of cyber cafes by men to view pornography. There is also a need to provide more internet access to women who are often intimated by their male counters parts or do not find a conducive environment to learn. The target for this intervention is middle income class working women, and will provide internet access, printing; coffee, regular educational seminars, and training events. Using the funds from the Omidyar Grant for Entrepreneurship in South Asia, iSpace will create a pilot cyber café in Chennai, and hope to grow this into numerous cyber café chains.