Dr Priyatam Anurag i
Self-Help Groups promoted under State Rural Livelihood Missions have emerged as a promising model for promoting micro-enterprise development in Nagaland and other Northeastern states. One of the Self-Help Group movement's key goals is to generate many women-owned enterprises. A pathway for realizing this transformational change is improving women-owned businesses' entrepreneurial and managerial practices. In this wake, capacity-building solutions are required that meet a threshold level of quality, affordability, responsiveness, scalability and speed. However, the availablephysical or digital solutions for building the entrepreneurial capacities of grassroots women enterprises need to be inone or more of the critical prerequisites for success. Unfortunately, the most commonly used physical mode of capacity building is prone to congestion and resulting lack of quality, affordability, and speed at scale. At the same time, alternative quality solutions in the upcoming digital capacity-building space are yet to emerge.
To overcome the abovementioned challenges, the government must invest in recasting the Northeast region's capacity-building ecosystem topromote growth-oriented enterprises. Given the region's unique conditions, such as sparse population, challenging geography and low level of business awareness, afunnel approachthat blends physical and digital training elements may be ideal for achieving a good balance between quality, affordability and responsiveness.
The same can be implemented using a three-stage process.
Basic Business Awareness: Awareness about entrepreneurship must be universalized to all the members of the target group by using an assisted digital model. Using a digital mediumcan reduce the cost of creating outreach across the state. The training content in the first stage may include engaging pre-recorded short lectures, experience-sharing sessions and simple gamesusingregion-specific content.The first stage can be followed by creating a local entrepreneurship interest group with meeting frequency as agreed by the participants.The participants may graduate to the next level by meeting quality of participation (indicative) parameters such aslevel of usage and engagement/involvement in training apps, completion of follow-on digital tasks leading to earning participation badgesand participation level in the meeting of local entrepreneurship interest group.
Business Idea Generation: Successful participants from Stage 1 graduate to the following stages of business training (idea development). Here, the participants may be trained on business idea generation and refinement in a phygital mode where digital activity can be complemented with handholding by local project staff for field-basedexercises (e.g. interaction with entrepreneurs and business owners in the local area) and inputting the details in the digital mode. The project staff with experience facilitating a minimum number of training cohorts (say 5) can be assigned a role to evaluate the responses and firm up the business idea. Similar to Stage 1, participants can be assessed on parameters related to participation in digital and physical training, and successful candidates will graduate to next stage.
Business Planning: Following the idea development stage, successful participants can move to business plan training on meeting stage 2 quality of participation criteria. In stage 3, the participants may be trained on developing a marketing plan, operational plan (e.g. establishing efficient operations) and financial planning (e.g. estimation of startup capital). Participants can be supported through intensive handholding and evaluated, similar to Stage 2. A more qualified pool of trainers with the eligibility to facilitate a minimum number of training cohorts (say 10) can be assigned a role to evaluate the responses and develop a business plan. As a next step, participants with business ideas and techniques with products/services or technology new to the location can be recommended for incubation services. The project can complement training with other support services such as guidance & mentoring, assistance in finding finances, and providing information related to markets and marketing assistance. A capacity-building approach, as described above, can significantly build the capacity of women entrepreneurs in the region.
i Dr Priyatam Anurag is a Faculty in Strategic Management at the Indian Institute of Management Lucknow. He has spent several years researching the development issues in Northeast India. The views expressed in this article are personal.
