Sri Kshetra Dharmasthala Rural Development Project (SKDRDP), launched in the year 1982 by Dr. D Veerendra Heggade, Dharmadhikari of Dharmasthala, a small temple town in South India, aims at the upliftment of rural poor. SKDRDP is active at present in the State of Karnataka in South India, where it is engaged in an intensive fight against poverty, ignorance, illiteracy, alcohol abuse, gender discrimination, division of villages on the lines of caste, creed and money power. SKDRDP has promoted various income-generation activities in production and service sector. Self-help groups are motivated, trained and assisted in setting up group ventures to help the poor rural women earn their own income and escape poverty permanently through self-employment or entrepreneurship. The SIRI Gramodyoga Yojane of SKDRDP is the focus of this research paper due to its central role in group entrepreneurship promotion among poor rural women. It is under this program, many women earn their livelihood from group ventures. Many women support themselves and their families through the income they earn from their entrepreneurial activities. In this paper, the authors have made an attempt to understand the key support structure and identify the success factors for creating, developing and sustaining group enterprises.

Poverty is an overarching factor and a reality of life for a majority of women in India. A corrective to such a situation is women's right to gainful employment. Apart from being a question of survival, this would increase their self-esteem and provide for a greater autonomy within the household. Indirectly, this would also increase their direct participation in the community activities, leading them on to wider horizons. The promotion of entrepreneurship among women is important to stimulate economic growth, increase women's income and their quality of life. Entrepreneurship has thus the potential to alleviate female poverty and, by extension, to alleviate gender inequalities.

Group entrepreneurship offers an effective development strategy for harnessing rich rural resources into a large number of income-generating opportunities. The great advantage of group entrepreneurship is that it can be carried out with the poorest of the poor. With the group entrepreneurship, rural poor can earn their living within a sustainable village economy by undertaking entrepreneurship. A pragmatic view is that the group venture provides the poorest and the most marginalized people, who cannot start the venture individually, with the opportunities to earn an income. Therefore, promoting and supporting their involvement in the group activities is an important survival strategy for them and their families.

Entrepreneurship Development Journal, Group Entrepreneurship, Economic Growth, Development Strategy, Rich Rural Resources, Business Sectors, Women Entrepreneurs, Small-Scale Enterprises Sector, Economic Empowerment, Production Skills, Business Development Services, Empirical Survey.