12th November 2025
Natarajan Empowerment Foundation is joining hands with IIM Mumbai to launch the Leadership Accelerator Program, a transformative initiative designed specifically for mid-career women professionals ready to step into leadership roles.
What makes this program special? It’s not just another course. We’re bringing together the best of both worlds: rigorous academic learning from IIM Mumbai’s renowned faculty and real-world wisdom from accomplished women CXOs who’ve walked the path. Participants will experience immersive residential sessions on campus—a chance to step away, reflect deeply, collaborate with peers, and truly transform their leadership journey.
The goal is simple yet powerful: to equip women professionals with the skills, confidence, and networks they need to break through barriers and lead with impact. Because when women rise into leadership, everyone benefits—organisations thrive, communities flourish, and we move closer to building a truly inclusive and Viksit India.
October 16th marked the exciting launch of Success with Scale – a program launched in collaboration between Natarajan Empowerment Foundation and TiE Pune Women. Created to help women founders scale their businesses with confidence and clarity, the launch event brought together incredible women entrepreneurs, each bringing bold ideas, inspiring stories, and the courage to dream bigger. Their enthusiasm and engagement reminded us exactly why this program exists – women founders are hungry for mentorship that helps them build credible, scalable, and sustainable businesses.
NEF Mission Director, Avani Shroff shared the program structure and Dr. Ganesh Natarajan conducted an inspiring session on Entrepreneurship that set the perfect tone. Some of our esteemed mentors – Ashok Bildikar, Dr. Vishwas Mahajan, Advait Kurlekar, Narendra Goidani and Smita Yedekar were present at the launch.
The 19th edition of Women Prowess hosted by Hope Foundation and Research Centre in collaboration with GTT Foundation & Rotary Club of Pune Riverside was held on 22nd July 2025. Our Founders, Dr. Ganesh Natarajan and Dr. Uma Ganesh, have been instrumental in the success of this event. Their strategic direction has led to this event becoming a powerful movement — one that has consistently championed women-led innovation and societal transformation. This year’s theme, “Reimagining India: From Passion to Success,” brings together an extraordinary panel featuring changemakers from media, healthcare, branding, entrepreneurship, and social impact. The panelists include Sunanda Mehta – Senior Journalist & Author, Dr. Shona Nag – Renowned Oncologist, Kiran Grewal – CEO, Garry N Sun Organics and Sulajja Firodia Motwani– Founder & CEO, Kinetic Green.
NEF is proud to share that our co-founder Dr. Ganesh Natarajan, together with poet and educator Urmi Rumi, has co-authored Viksit India – a unique book that blends vision and verse to reimagine India’s development journey. Moving beyond statistics, the book captures the aspirations and lived realities of citizens through poetic storytelling and grounded reflection, offering both inspiration and a call to action for a more inclusive, human-centred pathway to Viksit Bharat
NEF is proud to join hands with TiE Pune as the Knowledge Partner for the TiE Women Global Pitch Competition. This platform goes beyond pitching. It is a launchpad for women entrepreneurs to access mentorship, networks, and funding opportunities that can accelerate their journey.
At NEF, we believe that empowerment is about providing women with the right tools, guidance, and visibility to realise their potential. Through this partnership, we are committed to supporting women founders with knowledge-driven pathways to growth, while also creating a strong community of inclusive leaders.
Together with TiE Pune, we aim to break barriers, create opportunities, and build a future where women entrepreneurs lead India’s progress toward Viksit Bharat.
In her column for The Financial Express, our co-founder Dr. Uma Ganesh highlights how India’s progress in financial inclusion can be deepened through digital and AI-led solutions tailored for rural communities. She explores the need for voice-enabled systems, multilingual models, offline-first apps, and innovative credit assessments to truly empower the underserved at the grassroots.
18 Dec 2025
NEF was proud to stand alongside India’s women entrepreneurial community at EmpowHer25 — the third annual edition of the SHELeadsIndia conference, held at The Orchid Hotel, Pune. The event brought together 80+ women founders, partners and ecosystem builders for a full day of keynotes, masterclasses, and panel discussions under the theme of setting new benchmarks. The keynote by the founders of SUTA — one of India’s most celebrated saree brands — set a powerful tone on building heritage businesses in a digital-first world. NEF’s presence as a knowledge partner at this vibrant forum reflected its deep commitment to creating visibility and connections for women entrepreneurs, and reinforced its role as a trusted partner in Pune’s growing ecosystem of women-led enterprise
10 Jan 2026
NEF’s Chief Mentor, Dr. Uma Ganesh, was honoured to take the stage at TEDxFLAME University’s D’Day — the flagship annual event of one of Pune’s most celebrated TEDx communities. This year’s theme, “Compass: Notion of a Calling,” invited speakers and audiences to explore the courage to follow one’s inner sense of purpose. Dr. Ganesh’s address, drawing on her remarkable journey across entrepreneurship, digital skills, and women’s empowerment, offered a deeply resonant perspective on what it means to discover and act on one’s calling. Her talk inspired the student audience to think boldly about purpose-driven leadership and affirmed NEF’s belief that empowering young minds is central to building the India of tomorrow.
6 Feb 2026
NEF hosted an intensive Business Plan Workshop exclusively for the finalists of the NES Innovation Awards — a programme that has fostered youth-led innovation across 12 states and 1,000+ colleges since 2012. Designed to sharpen the strategic thinking and presentation readiness of this select group, the workshop guided finalists through the rigour of building credible, structured business plans across themes ranging from AI for social good and healthcare to agriculture, clean energy, and smart cities. Seasoned mentors and entrepreneurs from the NEF network worked closely with participants, offering hands-on coaching and practical frameworks. The session exemplified NEF’s ethos of not just recognising talent, but actively equipping it to grow.
15 Feb 2026
We are proud to have partnered as the Knowledge Partner for People’s Code – 2026: Crafting Culture That Cares, hosted by The PowerPoint CoWorking & Managed Spaces at Courtyard by Marriott, Hinjewadi, Pune.
This HR Conclave brought together HR leaders and professionals to discuss key challenges in building sustainable organisational cultures, including wellness, sustainable leadership, cybersecurity, retention, and CSR impact. A special highlight for us was our Founder, Dr. Ganesh Natarajan, delivering the keynote address, where he spoke on sustainable leadership.
Congratulations to the People’s Code team for curating an outstanding lineup of speakers and relevant topics that added real value to the HR community in Pune. Listening to speakers, including Dr. Ganesh Natarajan, Rashmi Maheshwari, Ronita Sengupta, Priyanka Khandelwal Gupta, Sanil N., Dipal Panchal, Melrose Rebeiro, Dr. Sachidanand R. Kulkarni (SRK), Siddharth Pednekar, and Nabomita Mazumdar was truly inspiring.
We look forward to more such conclaves. With changing times, organisations need to continuously adapt and reinvent themselves, and HR remains at the forefront of driving this transformation.
25 Feb 2026
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13 Mar 2026
The NEF Innovation Awards Evening was a landmark celebration of India’s most promising young innovators — the culmination of a rigorous process that has engaged over 25,000 students and 4,000+ ideas across 12 states since 2012. Bringing together finalists, mentors, investors, and champions of youth innovation, the evening recognised outstanding ideas across fourteen impactful themes — from AI for social good and biomedical devices to smart cities, clean energy, and rural development. Guided by the NEF Innovation Council led by Dr. Raghunath Mashelkar, Dr. Ganesh Natarajan, and Dr. Uma Ganesh, the awards reaffirmed NEF’s long-standing commitment to nurturing the next generation of solution-builders who will power India’s journey to Viksit Bharat.
20 Mar 2026
NEF celebrated a defining milestone with the successful conclusion of Success with Scale — Cohort 1, a pioneering programme designed to equip women entrepreneurs in Pune with the tools, rigour, and confidence to scale their ventures with purpose. Launched in October 2025 under the leadership of NEF’s Head of Women Initiatives Avani Shroff, the five-month programme comprised six intensive workshops and ten hours of one-on-one hybrid mentoring, delivered by seasoned entrepreneurs and investors committed to paying it forward. At the culmination event, 15 founders presented their three-year business plans to a distinguished gathering of mentors, investors, and peers — structured milestone narratives that reflected each founder’s clarity of vision and readiness to scale. Applications are now open for Cohort 2, commencing June 2026, with an expanded intake of 25 women founders. As always, the programme is entirely free of charge
23 Mar 2026
The inaugural Women’s Leadership Accelerator Program at Indian Institute of Management Mumbai officially began on March 22 with 17 accomplished women leaders — including AVPs, Directors, and Senior Managers from BFSI, technology, and non-profit sectors — starting a transformative six-month leadership journey.
Launched through a collaboration between Natarajan Empowerment Foundation and IIM Mumbai, the program is designed to address the leadership gender gap in India by equipping mid-career women with the mentorship, strategic frameworks, and professional networks needed to advance toward C-suite and board-level roles.
The inaugural sessions featured insights from leaders including Ganesh Natarajan, Uma Ganesh, and Eika Chaturvedi Banerjee, focusing on leadership development, self-awareness, and overcoming structural barriers faced by women in corporate environments.
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