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    Entrepreneurship on wheels: A UNDP project is taking mentorship and training to rural women

    Synopsis

    It is well known that in India has one of the lowest workforces in the world with a rank of 108 in the Gender Gap Index. The only way to bridge the space is by economically empowering women by providing them an opportunity to have a job or start their own business.

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    The Biz-Sakhi model and micro-entrepreneurship is already working in Karnataka, Haryana, and Maharashtra currently.
    By Mamta Sharma

    If India’s dream of inclusive growth has to be realized, women, especially in the rural parts of the country, need to be empowered.

    In rural India, older, married women aspire for basic skills and competencies, to set-up small, self-sustaining businesses. They seek support in terms of business development, knowledge and skills for running a nano or micro business, access to finance, and access to markets. However, given their socioeconomic constraints, compounded further by limited access to training facilities, poor public transport, as well as restricted mobility in remote geographies, their needs are often unfulfilled.

    A United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) project now looks to change the situation by addressing specific and key problems. In a nut-shell UNDP’s aim was firstly, provide hand-holding to women entrepreneurs and secondly reach out to them proactively. The thought was to have an entrepreneurship development programmes in the country that not only provides women with the capacity to access the market, finance but also provided them with psychological and emotional support.
    UNDP’s Disha project, which is also supported by IKEA Foundation, has been able to create a network of mentors that will help women start and grow their small business to become self-sustainable pillars within their communities. In line with their efforts, an innovative entrepreneur mentorship and business development solution has been arrived at in Karnataka, through the ‘Biz Sakhis on Wheels’ programme, in partnership with Deshpande Foundation.

    With the goal here being simple – of taking entrepreneur mentorship and training to more women in rural Karnataka, UNDP’s Disha Project in partnership with Navodyami programme and Desphande Foundation procured a mini-van in December 2018. The mini-van was launched to facilitate entrepreneurship awareness programmes, conduct entrepreneurship development trainings, and create direct market linkages for women entrepreneurs across the five districts on June 21, 2019.

    The Biz Sakhis on Wheels model of UNDP’s Disha Project hopes to expand outreach to remote areas by providing door-to-door training in villages, conducting regular interactions between the Biz Sakhis and aspiring entrepreneurs on business development, branding and marketing, MSME schemes and government funding.

    It also doubles up as a mobile marketplace– showcasing and selling products of the women entrepreneurs at different Navodyami Santhes (exhibitions), organized by the UNDP’s partner Deshpande Foundation. Moreover, the mobile marketplace aims to create direct market linkages for budding entrepreneurs who can showcase their products and receive customer-feedback for product upgradation.

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    Community outreach
    Biz Sakhis are women business owners who have undergone extensive entrepreneurship development trainings - equipped to mentor and guide women from their communities on starting and/or scaling their businesses. Currently, there are 100 Biz Sakhis in Karnataka who have a network of over 2000 aspiring and existing women entrepreneurs, to whom they provide mentorship and entrepreneurship development support in Hubli, Belgaum, Gadag, Uttara Kannada and Sirsi districts, at a community level.

    Seema Khatavkar, a second-generation woman entrepreneur from Hubli, Karnataka is one such woman currently undergoing the Biz Sakhi Training. Khatavkar started supporting her mother’s fashion design, tailoring and embroidery business by connecting her to markets, financial institutions and creating a sustainable business model supporting other women, by providing them employment.

    “Being a part of my mother’s business and supporting her, I realised some of the challenges faced by aspiring and existing women micro-entrepreneurs on the field such as, limited or no seed capital to start a business, buy equipment and machinery, lack of family support – financial and moral, limited knowledge about how to run a business, how to manage inventories, accounts, limited knowledge about markets, low self-confidence and restricted mobility because buying and selling raw materials and products only happens in big cities, ‘’ says Khatavkar.

    Through the Navodyami Santhe (Deshpande Foundation’s weekly exhibitions to support local women-run businesses), Khatavkar came to know about the Biz Sakhi programme and its aim to support aspiring and existing women business owners through a community engagement model. She signed up for it immediately.

    "My key expectation from the project was to reach more and more women, especially those who have some disadvantages and constraints by imparting not just my technical skills but also psycho-social support. I believe that all women have it in them to become self-sufficient and independent, they just need a little push. I want to be able to give them that,’’ says Khatavkar.

    After completing two modules of the Biz Sakhi training, she now believes that the programme has given her a platform to support these women. As a result, in just two-months she has been able to reach-out to 13 additional women entrepreneurs whom she will be supporting in starting and scaling their businesses.

    The project is important because it drives home the message that opportnitie for women is not limited to opening a small kirana shop or a beauty parlour. If you do that, you reach saturation income of market very quickly. With Biz Sakhis, UNDP is able to propagate and disseminate that knowledge to other women and convince them that they don’t need to start a kirana shop, but there are other businesses they can do and that might be more profitable.

    Learning and sharing
    Mentorship is common in the tech startup space and is a key part of the entrepreneurial community, but for entrepreneurs in rural India, getting guidance from an experienced person is elusive.

    The Biz-Sakhis are selected on the basis of certain key criteria - those who have passed a minimum of 7th Grade education, between the age of 25-45 years, have existing micro-entrepreneurship experience of three to five years, have accessed MSME schemes and loans in the past, and are willing to support other aspiring women business owners. They are trained by District-Business Coordinators over a duration of five months in building psycho-social aspects of mentorship and guidance, problem solving, time management, customer interaction apart from business development related trainings, to create a holistic knowledge and skill base. The curriculum is done by two national institutions –NIESBUD as well as NIRD in collaboration with TISS.

    “Initially the challenge I faced was that the trainings were being organised in the city centre and getting to and from the venue was difficult. But now that the Biz Sakhi on Wheels is officially launched, this shouldn’t be a problem anymore,” says Khatavkar.

    Clement Chauvet, Chief, Skills and Business Development, UNDP India, says that with the project they aim to enable the creation of a platform for all stakeholders which will work as a solution exchange where entrepreneurs, policy makers, mentors, academic institutions, expertise of finance, market, technology etc. will join as a supporting platform for promotion of women entrepreneurship in India.

    “When we started creating the network for Biz Sakhi, we found out that when women start a business in the community, many are successful. Because all of the Biz Sakhis we are training are entrepreneurs themselves, there’s no better way to get guidance than from an entrepreneur. They can be someone who is also experienced to set up a business, who might have failed, but actually bounced back from the failures and lessons learnt. Thus, we identified within the community, the successful entrepreneurs and decided to provide them with a proper training so that they can become mentors. What we found out is that most of them what actually want to support others, and on a voluntary basis. The idea of the community is very strong in India and especially in rural places,” he explains.

    Chauvet says women in rural places in India are barely literate and may never be able to, for example, fill the application on their own. But if they have a mentor like Biz Sakhis who knows the procedure and already has a relationship with the bankers which are granting the loan, then it is going to be much easier for the aspiring women entrepreneurs to access the facility.

    The Biz-Sakhi model and micro-entrepreneurship is already working in Karnataka, Haryana, and Maharashtra currently. “Right now, we are working with a few organizations on the field: Deshpande Foundation in Karnataka, FREND the organization, that is promoting the internet saathi programme supported by Google and Tata Trust as well as Humana People to People India,” informs Chauvet.
    (Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are that of the writer. The facts and opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of www.economictimes.com.)
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