New Delhi, March 2 : A whopping 183 women entrepreneurs are now ready to take their startups to the next level after completing their mentorship programme provided by 91Springboard, a co-working firm in partnership with Google for Startups (GfS), the companies said on Thursday. The 'Level Up' programme is a nationwide virtual accelerator programme aimed at empowering women entrepreneurs. As part of its first cohort, which was formed in August 2022, the companies vetted and selected 183 women founders from 360 applications. About 71 mentors provided masterclasses, peer meetups, tools and expertise for three months to build and scale their businesses. With the startup culture percolating into deeper pockets of the country, the Cohort 1 included women entrepreneurs from cities, such as Chandigarh, Surat, Indore, Pune and others in addition to the top metro cities. "Lately, we have witnessed a surge of women entrepreneurs becoming self-reliant and independent. It is great that our government is supporting them. This collaboration with GfS for Level Up will boost the confidence of the founders and assist them in their journey," said Anand Vemuri, CEO, 91Springboard, in a statement. "Women founders still comprise a very small fraction of the overall pie and we think programmes that facilitate and enable this representation are very timely and highly important. We are pleased to collaborate with 91Springboard for this," added Nicole Yap, Partnership Manager, Google for Startups. The entrepreneurs were given insights and guidance from accomplished mentors from Google and other leading corporations. The mentors acted as sounding boards, and worked with the women founders on their challenges and to work out strategies to scale their business from X to 10X. Through the course of the programme more than 200 hours were spent on mentoring the founders with over 12 hours in formal networking. The companies are calling for applications for the Cohort 2 of the Level Up programme, scheduled to start in March. /IANS