The Goa Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) – Women’s Wing jointly with – Forum for Innovation, Incubation, Research and Entrepreneurship (FiiRE) – Government of India and powered by Geno Foundation and Menino Regency conducted its 5th Edition of Business Diva 2024. The Chief Guest was Padmashree Shashi Soni , Chairperson, M/s Hughes Precision and Rajkumar Kamat, Founder, E P Kamat Group/Executive Director, BNI Goa was the Guest of Honour. The function was presided over by Shrinivas Dempo, President, of GCCI.
Business Diva is a business idea competition for women and mainly focuses on innovative solutions to women-centric issues and solutions. The aim of the Business Diva Competition 2024 is to impact and uplift more women entrepreneurs through entrepreneurship. The competition was held in three categories –Startup (Businesses in existence for less than 2 years), Scale up (businesses in existence for more than 2 years), and Self-help groups.
The welcome address was delivered by Asha Arondekar- Chairperson of GCCI- Women’s Wing. Risha Hegde who represented FiiRE explained how the program was conducted over the last 2 months. Sandra Fernandes, Co-Chair, GCCI – Women’s Wing delivered the Vote of Thanks. The function was compered by Clare De Souza, member of GCCI-Women’s Wing. 
The winners of the contest were
Category 1: Start Up
Winner: Anasha Pereira
Runner up: Supriya MV
Finalists: Swaroopa Naik
Christabel Menezes Pinto
Meena Vidhya Borkar Mascarenhas
Category 2: Scale up
Winner: Yojana Dinesh Fal Dessai
Runner up: Shilpa Ramesh Vantekar
Finalists: Ashwini Pai Dukle
Sujata Kamat
Monalisa Singh
Category 3: Self-help groups
Winner: Pobrinha Carvalho
Runner up: Venecia Vaz George
Finalists: Ratika Ratnakar Velip
Rajani Khandeparkar
The Chief Guest in her speech showered praise on such business focus and rewards for women in business and also spoke of her inspiring journey from a seed of Rs.10,000/- to being felicitated with a Padmashree in business. She also applauded GCCI- Women s Wing for the good work done by them through various programs and congratulated the winners and participants. The winners were given cash prizes, and mementos and would be offered support by FiiRE to scale up their business. The function was well attended by the business fraternity of Goa
