New Delhi, Jun 14 (IANS): Google on Tuesday announced its startups accelerator programme that will nurture about 20 startups led by women founders in India.

The programme is aimed to help women founders address challenges that are unique to their experience, including fundraising, hiring and many others.

The inaugural batch of Google for Startups Accelerator - India Women Founders programme will accept up to 20 women-founded/ co-founded startups in India, including startups at the minimum viable product stage, and support them through a three-month programme.

The programme will place special focus on areas like access to networks, access to capital, hiring challenges, mentorship and many others which, for a variety of social reasons and low representation, prove challenging for female founders.

In addition to these, the curriculum will include workshops and support around AI/ML, Cloud, UX, android, web, product strategy and growth, as well as provide access to a global community of women founders.

India is the world's third largest startup capital, trailing only the US and China. It boasts over a 100 unicorns with 22 getting added to the list just in 2022, spanning verticals such as e-commerce, healthtech, fintech and many others.

However, only 15 per cent of these Indian unicorns have one or more women founders.

"The new programme is part of a larger effort by Google towards improving the representation of women across different sections of India's digitally-trained workforce, be it entrepreneurship, professionals looking to upskill or young graduates seeking a head start on their career, with the ultimate objective of making technology universally relevant and helpful," the tech giant wrote in a blogpost.

The applications for the programme are open till July 10, it added.