We as a nation have a crying need both as people and country to create economic opportunities and harness the energy of entrepreneurs and startups, said Sunil Kant Munjal, past president, CII & Chairman, Hero Corporate Services Ltd, while delivering the keynote address at the CII Industry Mentorship Summit 2017 held in Delhi.
He further mentioned that youth needs to be educated, trained and skilled to take up the emerging opportunities globally and lack of such opportunities will create a demographic nightmare. Current businesses have become more competitive and technology driven, which have created a need for having mentors or guides to help in preparing a customised roadmap of growth for organisations. He gave an example of driver less cars signifying that India will not just produce new products, will also produce new business models. These incidentally are based on fruguality. This type of innovation culture, India need to build for the industry and budding entrepreneurs.
Creating India into one common market will lead to intense competition. So where do you go with your problem? In our homes, the elders were considered as mentors, however social fabric is changing fast, and as an enterprise the competition will become more intense, so the need for mentors beyond and across. Mentoring is a way to go beyond current constraints and look for beyond and about encouragement and igniting a fire, he added.
He welcomed the Government of India’s continued initiatives on ease of doing business and hoped that India will see quantum jump in ratings in few years.
Shreekant Somany, Chairman, CII National SME Council and Chairman & Managing Director, Somany Ceramics Limited while setting the context stated that the entrepreneurial ventures bring in large economic benefits, contributes to job creation, innovation, wealth creation and societal well-being.
The SME sector contributes to the Indian economy very significantly (about 37 per cent of total manufacturing output directly/indirectly). The core thought is that majority of start-ups and first generation ventures should succeed and go on to become high impact professional organizations to create value for its employees, the industry and the country, he said.
He further stated that number of start-ups created have a big impact and young people aspire of making big. Adequate guiding mechanism and knowledge sharing can ramp up their efforts and bring scale to their thoughts.
Patriarch of a group is a reservoir of knowledge, however it must be used both within and outside. Large companies deploy their resources to mentor their small counterparts, today’s biggest challenge to SME’s is technology and finance. Industry stakeholders must join hands to ensure success of start ups. Entrepreneur led organizations & family owned SME organizations continue to contribute to the growth of the country; need to capitalize upon the vast opportunity which presents itself in the form of ‘Make in India’ there is a need to think the next step, the next big thing they want to do, Somany opined.
Harpal Singh, Chairman Emeritus & Mentor, Fortis Healthcare, Mr Praveer Sinha CEO & Managing Director Tata Power Delhi Distribution Limited, in their comments highlighted the need to become more focused while looking for areas to be mentored. This would help in customised solutionsto bring in efficiencies into the entrepreneurial companies.
The summit was attended by 100+ representatives from industry esp SMEs, start-ups, institutes, entrepreneurs from the north.
Other prominent speakers / panelists, who shared their real life experiences and strategies on the changing nature of the businesses and how mentoring would facilitate sailing through the challenges of development in global context, included : Rajeev Kapoor, Chairman, Regional Committee on HR, CII NR; Rajiv Sahdev, JBM Group; Yogesh Sood.
BW Reporters
Vaishali Dar is a Senior Associate Editor with BW Businessworld and Editorial Head with BW Disrupt. She writes on corporates, start-ups, hospitality and travel
