Micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) members of the Confederation of Indian Industry in the southern region will have a chance to be mentored by senior industry professionals. This will help Chief Executive of these units to improve their competitiveness.
The CII will provide its MSME members with hand-holding services to enhance technical skills through a panel of Senior Expert Advisory Services. They will also be provided with linkages experts for a one-to-one consultation and engagement.
To begin with, the mentoring programme will be for CII members in the southern region and later taken up at an all-India level.
Modelled in the format of Senior Experten Service of Germany, the programme will act as a stepping stone to enable the small and medium enterprises to avail themselves of advanced support and service to become truly competitive, said Mr S. Nagarajan, Advisor, TAFE, who is actively involved in the mentoring programme.
The CII will bring together group of technical consultants on a platform. The experts will guide the companies in any required field of total quality management, manufacturing, green technology, energy efficiency, competiveness, quality and international quality, he said at the launch of the programme.
The CII has also launched a Business Mentoring Service in partnership with Coaching Foundation India Ltd, which has a large number of trained and accredited coach-mentor. These coaches will be available for a fee to the MSMEs.
According to Mr T.T. Ashok, Chairman, CII, Southern Region, the role of MSMEs in the Indian economy is vital. With 26 million registered and unregistered units, this sector employs nearly 60 million people and adds nearly 1.3 million people every year.
Nine-point agenda
As part of its nine-point agenda, the CII has recommended to the government to earmark nearly 15 per cent of the budget for the MSMEs for various issues, including working capital requirement. The CII has also recommended the creation of a venture capital fund with a corpus of Rs 10,000 crore for the MSME sector. Most of the venture capital firms do not look at this sector, he said.