Call to develop network of incubators for growth of rural enterprises

A national workshop on ‘Rural enterprise incubators’ has called for developing a network of incubators across the country for a localised approach to overcoming the constraints of finance, technology, capacity building, and market linkages.

A one-size-fits-all approach would not work, Swati Sharma, Joint Secretary, National Rural Livelihoods Mission, said at the workshop organised by the Kudumbashree and the National Rural Livelihoods Mission here.

She said that concentration on main centres such as State capitals for incubation would not help as women across the country were in need of opportunities. There was need to leverage academic or research institutions other than the IIMs or IITs; start-ups; and private sector players that could work as incubators and broaden engagements with the enterprises.

The challenges

The second day of the three-day programme began with a panel discussion on ‘Financing for sustainable rural enterprises.’ The panellists who included representatives from the private sector discussed the challenges in finding adequate capital, those posed by absence of rural credit officials who understood community businesses closely, evaluation of entrepreneurial mindset, bringing down cost of credit, need to continuously inspire entrepreneurs, and understand which entrepreneurs want to scale up. A suggestion was to have intermediary start-ups work as aggregators for state rural livelihood missions (SRLMs) so that they could build a brand and go to the market while interfacing with self-help groups. One panellist stressed the need to prevent exploitation of nano entrepreneurs and ensure they had an agency when it came to borrowing. Another panellist spoke of forming non-farm collectives that helped in diversifying the risk among the members and the possibility of turning to blended finance.

It was pointed out that each enterprise incubated in the four States where the incubation programme had been piloted by the NRLM created 2.6 jobs.

Increase in revenue

The second session on ‘Learnings and reflections – SHG enterprise incubators,’ moderated by Subrangshu Sanyal, CEO of IIM Calcutta Innovation Park, saw Nirmala Mahato and Madhumita Parihari, two beneficiaries of the incubation project in West Bengal, narrate how their revenue has increased from ₹75 lakh to ₹2.5 crore in three years, mostly boosted by local demand.

Indrajit Das, State Programme Manager, Enterprise Promotion, Assam SRLM, spoke about how enterprises had been helped to prepare business plans, brand, get loans, and decide how to sell their product outside their area, district, and State.

Anand B.V., State Programme Manager, Non-farm Livelihood, Karnataka SRLM, said his State was proposing a change to scale up the incubator programme to include entrepreneurs who were not part of it.

Dr. Sanyal presented the learnings of the incubation programme that covered 450 enterprises in the four States where it was piloted. These enterprises had generated a revenue of ₹244 crore, provided employment to more than 13,000 women, and 59 of these 450 ‘didis’ had crossed a turnover of ₹1 crore.