Udyogini was set up to co-ordinate and facilitate management training for grassroots women's groups for the World Bank Institute-funded Women's Enterprise Management Training Outreach Program (WEMTOP). This was a three-year participatory action learning project aimed at strengthening the capacity of intermediary NGOs to deliver management training to poor women micro entrepreneurs in 1992. The training program consisted of Grassroots Management Training (GMT) carried out for women producers and the Training of Enterprise Support Teams (TEST) for the trainers of GMT. The trainings were carried out through NGOs who were responsible for group formation and bringing together the women. NGO staff was trained as trainers or Enterprise Support Teams (ESTs).


The project was based on a package completion approach. It was recognized that training alone would not be sufficient for promotion of enterprises. A number of other linkages - forward and backward - would be necessary. However it was thought that the field based NGOs will provide these other linkages. During the WEMTOP phase, Udyogini worked with 21 Voluntary Organizations (NGOs) in three states of Orissa, Bihar, and Rajasthan. A total of 130 trainers and 1,077 producer women were trained.

It was exciting that Udyogini was able to train so many women and NGOs that worked with women. But more was needed—especially as the markets were getting more complex. To remain strategic and inform its training programs for others, Udyogini needed to work directly at the grassroots to understand what it takes to take women all the way through from ‘mobilization to market'. So, in 2002, Udyogini began direct implementation at the grassroots. It selected sectors of the economy in which women were concentrated and in which depth and scale were required to be demonstrated to make a difference. It selected regions that offered a resource base – skills or natural resources that were required to be harnessed for enterprise and to empower women. It selected locations that were challenging and where women were not being supported for microenterprise work in any significant measure by government or NGOs.

Udyogini has come a considerable distance since its inception and has acquired critical knowledge of gender and microenterprise promotion at the grassroots both through its support work with partner NGOs and its programs in the field.