IIT Madras and Hand in Hand India train micro and marginal women entrepreneurs

IIT-Madras and Hand in Hand India have been conducting a development programme for micro and marginal women entrepreneurs through various Self Help Groups functioning in various villages and towns in and around Kanchipuram and Chengalpet.

The objective is to enhance the growth and profitability of micro and small businesses run by women entrepreneurs. They are provided hands-on high impact training on various functions of Business and Management.

The principal investigators of the project are Prof A Thillai Rajan, Prof G Arun Kumar and Prof Saji Mathew, Department of Management Studies, IIT-Madras.

Speaking about the importance of this initiative, Thillai Rajan said, “A critical constraint for most participants is the availability of capital. A development programme that not only helps the participants to get funding but also gives them inputs on how to deploy the funding wisely and ensures the sustainability of their businesses is the need of the hour. This programme precisely achieves that objective.”

Cumulatively, almost 140 entrepreneurs have benefited from this training so far. The most recent batch comprising 78 participants completed the programme recently. They were selected based on business category, revenue from business, and challenges faced.

The businesses run by the participants included tailoring and jewellery designing, beauty parlours, nurseries, grocery trading, mobile phone servicing, livestock rearing, etc.

The participants underwent training in various business and management topics over a week, wherein professors from IIT-Madras and professionals handled the session and delivered lectures in Tamil.

After the completion of the programme, the progress of the participants was closely monitored for over a period of six months. They were also offered Mentorship support, wherein the mentors guided the entrepreneurs by providing suggestions to improvise and to implement the programme to learn their respective businesses.

Without access to capital, the cycle is not complete. Hand in Hand proactively mediated with Banks to provide loans for successful entrepreneurs. An exclusive session on the drafting of the business plan was held by IIT-Madras and Hand in Hand to train entrepreneurs in developing a comprehensive business plan in a format suitable for banks.

A major thrust of this programme was to enable the women to assume the mindset of an entrepreneur rather than the mindset of being self-employed. An important problem faced by a majority of micro and marginal women entrepreneurs who start and run micro enterprises is the lack of formal training in running a business.

While most of them have some degree of domain experience in the areas in which they operate, business skills and knowledge are mostly self-learnt. Through this programme, it was intended to make modern management insights and knowledge easily accessible to these marginal entrepreneurs.