EDIOTS Make To the Semi-Finals of IIT – Bombay Business Plan Competition

Gaurav Kanabar and Maulik Vora, the second year students of PGDM-BE at EDI Ahmedabad, have made into the semi-finals of Eureka! – IIT – Bombay’s business plan competition. Eureka! is an International Business Plan Competition which aims at encouraging people from across the globe to flesh out their ideas and form global enterprises that combine technology, vision and business acumen. It has been independently recognised as Asia’s largest Business Plan Competition by Thomson Reuters and CNN.

Eureka! got 3300 entries in the initial round, out of which only 50 entries were selected for the semi-finals. Gaurav and Maulik belong to one of those 50 teams which are now being mentored by IIT – Bombay. The sessions addressed key issues like pricing strategies, cash needed to start a business, financial projections, sources of funding, marketing aspects, selling skills, sales and distribution strategy and public relations for start-ups.

Participants also learned ways to pitch their plan to potential investors. “The participants had great ideas but they were lacking in business potential. They were trained on ways to convert the ideas into good and saleable products. Participants were asked to pitch their idea in 60 seconds. We gave them feedback on what to focus on, voice modulation and presentation techniques,” said Amit Grover from Nurture Talent Academy, who mentored the participants.

Final b-plan submission is by December 17, 2011. We wish our students all the very best and hope that they get selected in final round.

Significance of skills in the Indian employment scenario

In India, unlike in industrialized countries or even in China, the demographic trends are quite favourable with almost 59 per cent population in the working age of 15 to 59 years and close to 20% in the age group of 15-24 years. The population below the age of 15 years accounts for almost 33 per cent. However, while the numbers and proportions might favour the Indian economy, the cause of concern is the quality of the workforce in terms of skill levels. A skilled young population in an environment where investment is expanding vis-à-vis the industrial world wherein the ageing population is an issue could be a major advantage. It is important to realize, however, that we can reap this demographic dividend only if we invest in human resource development and skill formation in a massive way and create productive employment for our relatively young working population.

The skill shortages have emerged in almost all areas be it manufacturing or services. NASSCOM-McKinsey Report 2005 projections indicate that there was a likely shortfall of about 500,000 suitable professionals (representing an opportunity cost of US$ 10 bn) by the end of the decade. Besides being a possible dampener to growth, the skill gap could hold back employment since employers might be forced to adopt capital-intensive technologies due to such labour shortages. Besides, there is an acute shortage of masons, plumbers, carpenters, mechanics of various electrical and electronic consumer durables, automobile repair mechanics and so on. There is a serious mismatch between the skills sets in demand and the skills available (or mostly lack of such skills) with the teeming unemployed poor. Most poor do not possess marketable skills as they have hardly any access to formal skill formation systems like ITIs and vocational training centers as they, by and large, do not fulfill entry conditions to these centers.

Going by the estimate of the Ministry of Labour and Employment, Government of India, only 5 per cent of the Indian Labour Force in the age group of 20-24 years has obtained vocational skills through formal means where as the percentage in industrialized countries varies between 60 per cent and 96 per cent. Also, about 63 per cent of the school students drop out at different stages, before reaching Class X. Data from the 61st round of NSS shows that only 3 per cent of the rural youth (15-29 years) and 6 per cent of the urban youth have gone through any kind of vocational training. The current set up for skill formation and upgradation is woefully inadequate. For inclusive growth, it is vital to enhance the productivity of labour in the unorganized sector.

The present capacity of our vocational education system is close to three (3) million. While 17 Union Ministries, all the State Directorates of Technical and Vocational Education, a number of NGOs and industry trade associations are engaged in this task, to reach this figure of about three million, it needs to be augmented to cover at least eight million new entrants to the labour force. As of now, in the formal vocational training and education stream, we have 6843 Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) and Industrial Training Centers (under the Ministry of Labour) and about 7000 Vocational Schools (under the Ministry of HRD). Compared to these numbers, China has about 5,00,000 Secondary Vocational Schools. This calls for some innovative mechanism to reach out and train the large number of resource poor unemployable youth so that they are able to earn their livelihood.

Also, what goes hand-in-hand with this training is a good grounding in intrapreneurial skills so that these skilled people also get armed with the right skills, knowledge and attitude to maximise the results within the existing resources.

Besides the limited capacity of the system, vocational education in India is characterised by outdated, structurally defined, centralized syllabi and low knowledge base teachers without much idea of market conditions or of imparting multi-skills. A good part of this is due to the fact that regular (academic) education and vocational training are perceived as mutually exclusive and alternate categories, not as an integrated system of education. Because of this, there is a perception among most people in the country that vocational education, as it exists in India, is for the “second class” citizens, not preferred and often not considered dignified enough. It may also be added that non-formal, in-house, on-the-job skill training is considered to be far superior than the formal ones.

Therefore, the Approach Paper to the 11th Plan rightly argued that there is a need to devise innovative ways of modernizing the ITIs and increasing their numbers substantially. Concerned with this phenomenon, the Prime Minister of India, in his address to the nation on this year's Independence Day (15 August 2007) announced that the government will endeavour to set up 50,000 skill training centres to meet the skill deficit of the country. This would mean around a ten fold increase in the number of training centres and an unprecedented scope to bridge the gap between unemployment and shortage of skilled labour. This would of course require development of suitable training material as well as a very large number of quality trainers/instructors.

In this respect, a UNDP supported SKILLS Project, implemented under the National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Board of the Department of Science and Technology; Government of India, a few years back, should be studied in greater detail and should be replicated. The innovative components of the Project like e.portal based skill training, public private partnership model to impart skill, involving private sector, and a large number of competency based skill training modules are worth replicating. The nodal institutions of this Project may be entrusted to play the role of mentoring, monitoring and accreditation.

Industries and industry associations will have to be involved as stakeholders in running them so that the scope and content of the training provided in these institutions is relevant to the needs of the industry and the job market, like in Germany. The number of skills for which training is provided also needs to be expanded to include new skills particularly in the informal sector. It will also require regular periodic surveys of the labour market.

In the above background, skill development along with other supportive measures for the informal sector is of vital importance and requires fast solutions with broad impacts in close cooperation among government, NGOs and private Sector.

To conclude, if one wants to transfer bad jobs to good and more productive jobs, improve current jobs by productivity growth, the only way to achieve these goals will be to enhance skills. Therefore, it is of paramount importance that 'skill formation and upgradation' is assigned high priority in the matrix of employment creation, poverty alleviation and inclusive growth.

-Dr. Dinesh Awasthi

From The Bloggers Desk

The Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDI) is an autonomous and not-for-profit Institute which was set up in 1983 and is sponsored by apex financial institutions - the IDBI Bank Ltd., IFCI Ltd., ICICI Bank Ltd. and State Bank of India (SBI). The Government of Gujarat pledged twenty-three acres of land on which stands the majestic and sprawling EDI campus.

EDI has helped set up twelve state-level exclusive entrepreneurship development centers and institutes. In view of EDI’s expertise in Entrepreneurship, the University Grants Commission appointed the EDI as an expert agency to develop curriculum on Entrepreneurship.

In the international arena, efforts to develop entrepreneurship by way of sharing resources and organising training programmes, has helped EDI earn accolades and support from the World Bank, Commonwealth Secretariat, UNIDO, ILO, FNSt, British Council, Ford Foundation, European Union and several other renowned agencies.

The Institute has also successfully carried out the prestigious task assigned by the Ministry of External Affairs, Govt. of India, to set up Entrepreneurship Development Centres in Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar and Vietnam. The Institute is presently working towards creating ED Centres in Uzbekistan & Kazhakistan.

After successfully working on entrepreneurial awareness and development in India and abroad, EDI now is planning to expand its horizon on the internet through its interactive blog ‘Budding Entrepreneurs’.

Through this blog, our well resourced faculties will be discussing important entrepreneurial aspects with rest of the academic fraternity as well as with students who are aspiring to study at EDI. Hope that everyone who visits our blog will get enriching information about developing the entrepreneur residing within each one of us and help them start their own enterprise.