iWorld
With a focus on empowering women, Facebook launches digital skilling and mentorship initiative
MUMBAI: In a bid to empower more women with digital know how and new age skill sets, Facebook today announced GOAL- Going Online As Leaders, a program aimed at inspiring, guiding and encouraging tribal girls from across India to become village-level digital young leaders for their communities. Spanning across West Bengal, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, the initiative seeks to nurture and train young girls from India's tribal heartland across three core areas – digital literacy, life skills, leadership and entrepreneurship.
The program will see 25 eminent people from diverse backgrounds like business, education and health to politics, arts and entrepreneurship volunteering and personally mentoring 4 girls each from tribal communities across the above priority states. Spanning over six months, the program will see on-ground trainers impart digital literacy to the identified girls through a dedicated digital skilling curriculum while the 25 women leaders mentor them via Facebook or WhatsApp on a fortnightly basis. The digital training of the selected girls will be supported by Digital Empowerment Foundation led by Osama Manzar through pre-established community digital infrastructure hubs in tribal areas of the country.
Ankhi Das, Public Policy Director, Facebook -India, South & Central Asia said, “The internet, especially social media over the past few years has emerged as one of the most powerful tools for empowering women from across India's diverse social economic backgrounds and varied cultural roots. With GOAL, we seek to make the digital medium more accessible and usable for young girls from our resource rich but economically weak tribal communities in the country. We are confident that this network of learners will employ these skills as a means of social and economic elevation for themselves and drive change making in their communities.”
In order to be a part of GOAL, the applicants will be required to be over 18 years of age and of tribal origin. The programme will specifically focus on girls who've dropped out of school due to financial constraints, reside near the skilling center to ensure regular participation.
GOAL will provide functional digital marketing and safety skills; equip the participants with basic digital tools; and nurture this network of young girls to instill life skills, leadership qualities and entrepreneurial attitude- readying them to shape the future of their respective communities. By the end of this year-long project, 25 women leaders would have inspired, guided and encouraged 100 girls from tribal communities to imbibe digital skills and life skills to become village-level Young Agents of Change.
Gaming
MTG gaming chief Benninghoff joins NODWIN board as esports firm primes for IPO
The Gurugram-based esports firm is pursuing a public listing, has returned to profitability and is growing revenues by 42 per cent
GURUGRAM: NODWIN Gaming is moving fast. The Gurugram-based gaming and esports company has launched a pre-IPO fundraising round, appointed UBS as lead adviser for both the round and a subsequent public listing, and landed a heavyweight board director, all in one go.
The new board member is Arnd Benninghoff, executive vice president of gaming at Stockholm-listed Modern Times Group (MTG), who has overseen the group’s strategic investments and portfolio growth since 2014. He is no stranger to building things: Benninghoff has founded and built fifteen companies, served as chief digital officer at ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG, managing director of SevenVentures, and chief executive of Holtzbrinck eLAB. He began his career as a journalist at Deutsche Presse Agentur and various TV networks, holds a Diplom-Kaufmann in business and administration from the University of Münster, and previously sat on the board of Edgeware AB.
The numbers back the ambition
NODWIN is not pitching a story without substance. The company has returned to EBITDA profitability and posted a 42 per cent year-on-year revenue surge, reaching $58.5m in the first nine months of FY2026. The pre-IPO round will combine a primary issuance to fund global expansion through organic growth and acquisitions, alongside a secondary sale to give existing shareholders some liquidity.
Akshat Rathee, co-founder and managing director of NODWIN Gaming, said Benninghoff understands “the entire lifecycle of the gaming and media ecosystem, from the boots-on-the-ground reality of building startups to the strategic complexity of managing multi-billion dollar global portfolios.”
Benninghoff, for his part, said the company “sits at the intersection of sports, entertainment, and technology, making it one of the most exciting players in the global gaming landscape today.”
A portfolio built for the global south
Founded in 2014 by Rathee and Gautam Virk, NODWIN has quietly assembled one of the more compelling esports portfolios outside the Western hemisphere. Its properties include DreamHack India and Comic Con India, and it recently acquired StarLadder, the Ukraine-based tournament organiser behind premier events in CS:GO and Dota 2. The company also serves as a long-term strategic marketing partner for the Evolution Championship Series (EVO), the world’s most prominent fighting game tournament, helping push it into new geographies.
Its geographic focus spans South Asia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Backers include Nazara Technologies, KRAFTON, Sony Group Corporation, JetSynthesys, and the founders’ investment vehicle Good Game Investments.
What comes next
With UBS running the books, a board freshly reinforced with European media and gaming expertise, and revenue heading in the right direction, NODWIN is laying the groundwork deliberately. The esports industry has burned investors before with big promises and thin margins. NODWIN’s return to profitability, combined with a real portfolio of owned intellectual properties across gaming, music and youth culture, gives it a more credible runway than most. The IPO clock is now ticking.
