CII-IWN Brings Hands-On AI Training to Women in Chandigarh

The Confederation of Indian Industry-Indian Women Network (CII-IWN) held a hands-on artificial intelligence workshop for women entrepreneurs and professionals in Chandigarh, giving participants direct experience with AI tools they could apply immediately in their businesses.

The session was led by Rocky Jagatiani and covered generative AI, agentic AI, and large language models (LLMs), which are AI systems trained on large amounts of text to generate and analyze content. The focus stayed practical throughout, moving from concept to direct business application.

Sakshi Katyal, Chairperson of the CII-IWN Chandigarh Tricity Chapter, said AI has moved well past the experimental stage.

“For women entrepreneurs and professionals in particular, AI can be an effective tool to simplify tasks, save time and achieve better outcomes,” Katyal said.

She added that structured workshops help women use AI confidently, not just understand it in theory. CII-IWN Co-Chairperson Lipi Pathak also attended the session.

What Participants Worked On

A standout feature of the workshop was its use-case approach. Attendees brought their own documents and data, including sales reports, financial statements, contracts, and marketing materials. They then used AI tools to work through those real files.

Jagatiani introduced applications across several areas: marketing, content creation, research, presentations, coding, data analysis, and automation. The session also examined how AI functions as a daily productivity tool, helping professionals handle recurring tasks faster and with fewer errors.

Organizers said the goal was to move participants beyond passive familiarity with AI. The workshop was designed so women left with skills they could use the next day, not just vocabulary they could discuss. This kind of applied training matters because the gap between knowing AI exists and knowing how to use it for a specific business task remains wide for many professionals.

CII-IWN’s Broader Skills Agenda

CII-IWN framed the workshop as part of a wider effort to build technical confidence among women in business and leadership roles. The network has positioned knowledge-sharing events as a core strategy for closing the gap between women professionals and fast-moving technologies.

The CII-IWN Chandigarh AI workshop is one example of how industry bodies are moving from awareness campaigns to skill-building with measurable outputs. Women who already run businesses or hold professional roles are a ready audience for this kind of training. They have immediate use cases and a direct incentive to apply what they learn.

For context on how women-led enterprises are growing globally, women now lead half of social enterprises worldwide, making applied tech training directly relevant to a large and growing group. Other organizations are addressing related gaps, including efforts to close systemic barriers that limit women’s economic participation beyond leadership titles.

CII-IWN said it plans to continue knowledge-sharing initiatives of this kind. Whether the frequency and scale of future sessions match the demand from women professionals in the region remains the practical question going forward.