Aimed at supporting and nurturning women enterpreneurs, Visa alongwith IFundWomen — a marketplace for women-owned businesses — has launched a grant program in India. As part of this program, women entrepreneurs in the country will receive funding to help them expand their businesses.

The digital payments technology leader will seek applications from women entrepreneurs across all sectors till October 20. Applicants need to submit details about their business and online presence, along with a short video about their business to www.ifundwomen.com/visa-india.

Three selected winners will receive grants of Rs 7 lakh each. Besitraining from leaders within the Visa and IFundWomen network.des, they will be provided.

Visa said it has partnered with FLO (the ladies' wing of FICCI) and Instamojo as digitisation partner for the programme in the country.

Women-owned businesses constitute around 14 per cent of the total entrepreneur base in India. Earlier a World Bank report had inidicated that a larger women participation in the overall workforce will boost India's economic growth.

"We want to see this number increase but our interactions with women entrepreneurs show that access to capital to fund, run and grow their businesses remains a challenge," said T R Ramachandran, Group Country Manager, India and South Asia, Visa.

The Visa and IFundWomen grant programme in India, the first outside of the US, "aims to boost female entrepreneurship and empower budding businesswomen through our network, guidance, financial support and resources to help achieve their dreams", he added.

Visa's partnership with IFundWomen is specifically designed to help women entrepreneurs secure the funding they need through a series of grants.

In June this year, Visa committed to supporting 50 million small businesses globally to power recovery and enable them digitally.

In August, through the first India edition of Visa Everywhere Initiative, it awarded three fintech startups with monetary awards and technological support to take their solutions to market, the company said..