The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) joined hands with the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Calcutta to provide proper training to budding entrepreneurs from Kolkata, Howrah, North and South 24 Parganas and Hooghly. The ones to get training belongs to Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Schedules Tribes (STs) and the ones who are underprivileged.
According to CII, this is the first small step before the budding entrepreneurs can take the next big leap in their career. The 25 first-generation entrepreneurs will deal with a range of trades ranging from leather, textile and handicraft, fishery, manufacturing to e-commerce, security and housekeeping services.
"By saying big push in big leap, we mean CII will handhold and mentor these entrepreneurs by way of assisting them in getting easy credit access, generating fresh and innovative ideas, making technological upgrade, enhancing capacity and most importantly establishing market linkage both nationally and internationally," said Smita Pandit Chakraborty, Chairperson, CII West Bengal State Council. "The ball has been set rolling," she further added.
On Monday, CII and IIM Calcutta jointly organised a two-day residential training workshop on the campus of IIM Calcutta to train and mentor the young entrepreneurs.
In the next six months, CII will train this group as to how to strategise, translate ideas into action, take calculated risks and take tough decisions.
This will help them broaden their horizon, prepare for big challenges, come up with fresh and big ideas and finally implement them with a degree of success. However, the workshop, which was supported by the National Small Industries Corporation (NSIC), an arm of the Union Ministry of MSME, covered a wide range of areas – planning for success, developing a brand, brand promotion through social media, financial planning, business proposals and funding.
CII has also set up an online SME Finance Facilitation Centre to provide advisory and credit facilitation support to SMEs.