Fostering Entrepreneurship in Northwest India
by Luciana Coen, Head of Global Corporate Affairs SAP Brazil.
Four non-profit organizations on the Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar axis, Gujarat, receive SAP consultancy team for welfare work. One-month project will increase the number of lives impacted by these NGOs.
Welfare projects in developing countries tend to be an important pillar for the structuring of society — mainly on fronts that help develop the economic autonomy of people and their communities. This has been the case in the projects that I have had the opportunity to get to know in Latin America and Africa. And now in India I have the feeling that there could be no better time for this kind of work that the four SAP Social Sabbatical Ahmedabad teams, in partnership with the Pyxera NGO, will develop during February. Every non-profit organization receiving consulting during this period were not chosen by chance.
India is experiencing a unique moment in the country’s economy in which technology and entrepreneurship are at the center of a social transformation process. And all entities participating in the program are engaged with these fronts. To better understand the importance of those projects, it is necessary to understand a bit what’s going on in the country and the region of Ahmedabad. As part of an anti-corruption program and to combat the black market (business and money), the Government has decided to remove the 500 and 1,000 rupee notes from circulation and is preparing a tax reform to be implemented this year. During this preparation, the society advances to the essential digital economy. Large projects such as Make In India, Skill India and Start Up India are emerging all over the country.
In line with these initiatives, the four NGOs receiving the SAP Social Sabbatical’s support will count on one-month consulting provided by a multidisciplinary team of SAP executives from different parts of the world. Ashray Incubator is an organization founded in 2014 that promotes the development of technological start-ups and social entrepreneurs. Ashray incubator has just been recognized as a Techno Business Incubator (TBI) by the National Science & Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB). This seal will allow them to receive funding not only from the private sector but also from the Government. The hardest challenge that this NGO has today is finding a structured way to measure and report the projects’ impact. The SAP team will help it develop this methodology.
Another incubator to be supported by Social Sabbatical is CIIE, acronym for Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship. This center was founded in 2001 by the State Government of Gujarat and the Ministry of Science and Technology and has already incubated more than 100 start-ups and provided mentoring to about 5,000 start-ups. The CIIE’s greatest demand is reviewing its work processes in order to be able to increase the impact and scale the existing projects.
NEEV, the third NGO participating in the project, comes from the academic world. Structured by IITGN — Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, one of the best tech universities in the country, NEEV was established in 2014 to support needy communities in the city of Gandhinagar. Its main objective is providing entrepreneurship courses and basic concepts of business management, mainly for young people and women. In addition, the NGO also offers vocational courses and professional placement to fathers and mothers of families in the region in order to increase the family income and promote the dignity of people in surrounding communities. “I used to work in a beauty salon, now I own the salon and have employees. I hope that the NEEV’s work reaches more people,” said Laxmi Sharma, entrepreneur and owner of a salon in on the university campus, in Ralaj.
SEWA Manager ni School is the fourth non-profit organization advised by SAP in the region. The newly founded SEWA will go through a project to review processes and develop reports for its stakeholders. One of its entrepreneurs is Hansiba that employs dozens of craftspeople who make craft pieces using original fabric and sewing, respecting and maintaining the local culture.
It is not uncommon that there are initial project scope changes, after the first week of work. In fact, it’s healthy to review the organization’s immediate need so that the medium-term impact on community is even larger. In the next article, I will bring more details about the NEEV’s project.
