deAsra Foundation‘s deAsra Centre of Excellence in Nano Entrepreneurship and Centre for Excellence in Entrepreneurship and Development (CEED) at Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics had organised a panel discussion on recently published report on the survey of Urban Nano Enterprises in Pune.
Dr Ajit Ranade, Vice chancellor of Gokhale Institute welcomed all the panellists while mentioning the importance as well as impact of the research by the centre. Pradnya Godbole, CEO of deAsra Foundation shared how foundation is trying to help nano enterprises by means of scientific research and on-ground help.
Director of CEED, Dr Lalitagauri Kulkarni & co-author of the report Ms Anushi Tiwary discussed report findings and suggestions to tackle issues faced by nano enterprises.
The moderator of the panel discussion Dr Ranjit Patnaik recommended policy implementation at district level.
One of the panellists, Sudhanwa Kopardekar (Director, MSME, Mahratta Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture, Pune) said that the different business model should be adopted for encouraging nano enterprises. He also suggested that CEED and deAsra can arrange training for entrepreneurs in order to learn about marketing, new technology etc.
Assistant Vice President, Research at Haqdarshak, Priyanka Vaze focused upon the problem of “Being Bankable”. As per her opinion, bridging the gap to solve credit issues, awareness about government schemes and bank schemes/sectors will be helpful in helping nano enterprises.
“Entrepreneurship is like Marathon,” We should focus on challenges faced by the marginalized group in nano enterprises. Working on coordinating at the district level is essential to boost nano business, said Gaurav Gupta, Project Manager at Tata STRIVE.
Anjani Kumar Srivastava (General Manager, SIDBI(Small Industries Development Bank of India), pointed out that there is a need for vernacular languages at government portals/apps. He shared the information about project undertaken by SIDBI in collaboration with the ISPIRIT foundation. They are testing a GST Sahay (help) platform with various banks and also on the RBI Sandbox, a controlled environment for testing financial products.
The discussion concluded that overall efforts on various fronts are required to resolve the issues faced by nano enterprises.
