Entrepreneurship-Post COVID Generating Employment & Socio-Economic Growth

Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) has organised a session on ‘Entrepreneurship-Post COVID: Generating Employment & Socio-Economic Growth’. With the vision of enabling Young Generation to inevitable power of doing things differently and aspire to invent new work avenues.

 

Objective of:

·         Deliberating on state initiatives and policies for Entrepreneurship Development.

·         Corporates sharing of their best practices in promoting entrepreneurship in Post Covid Scenario

·         Sharing newer entrepreneurship avenues.

 

In his opening remarks, Mr. Sunil Parekh, National Executive Committee Member, FICCI & Co- Chair, FICCI Gujarat State Council said, “Due to COVID a lot of start-ups have been affected and and the report is that about 31% of all start-ups nationally out of the 57,000 registered with DPT have actually closed down. & another 20 to 30% are struggling very badly. But It's a K shaped recovery now.

So, wow do we take Gujarat ecosystem to the version 2.0 and make sure that it's success is at par with the others and is able to concrete not only nationally in terms of output and success stories, but even globally.”

 

Mr Chandra Bhushan Chakraborty, Senior Vice President and Regional Head East & West, Amway India

Recently, the direct selling industry has gained much more prominence with the upswing of digitization, enhanced focus on selfcare, gig economy with growing aspirations of young audience and increased participation from women in the industry. In addition, the industry has presented a huge opportunity to people to gain financial stability and independence considering the looming uncertainty in the changing job scenario. The industry has presented a huge opportunity to people to gain financial stability and independence amongst the looming uncertainty in the changing job scenario over the last one year. We witnessed the desire to pursue guided entrepreneurship growing deeper which resulted in a tremendous upsurge of interest in Amway’s business majorly from the youth population, who look for flexible roles in the gig economy ecosystem and women entrepreneurs who constitute more than 60% of our direct sellers in the country. We at Amway, stand committed to provide opportunities to the aspiring entrepreneurs and help them build a sustainable business while following their passion. In line with the rising trend, we have also been significantly focusing on a digital-first approach to enhance competencies of our direct sellers to aid business growth and enable better market penetration, improve reach to potential customers, product accessibility and enhance the consumer experiences.

 

Dr Sunil Shukla, Director General, Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India, he said that: “India has approximately 6.3 crore MSMEs and these contribute about 29% towards the GDP. 33.4% of India’s manufacturing output comes from MSMEs. MSMEs contribute around 45% of the overall exports from India. MSMEs provide employment to around 120 million people. The frequency of starting a business is lower than the closure of the business and possibly due to COVID-19. These are some of the sectors, which have been badly impacted education being one of them. We are also impacted hospitality tourism. These are new opportunities, we can say maybe banking, organic, hydroponics, Dairy fisheries and all those opportunities.

 

Mr D R Parmar, Jt. Commissioner of Industries, Government of Gujarat, he said that: “COVID-19 has proved to be a major Black Swan effect event for the global economy and in most of the sectors of Indian and global economy. It also has caused severe stress by directly impacting supply chains and cash flows through industries. not only affected big Conglomerates but also small startups. so state government has also focused to take a balanced approach for boosting the manufacturing activities. And while traditional manufacturing is important to increase employment at the same time, it is also important to upgrade. With this background in recent only Gujarat industrial policy 2020 was announced, and while significant benefits have been announced for traditional manufacturing industries. But for the first time there are incentives introduced to companies to set up their own R&D centers.

 

A panel discussion on “Entrepreneurship: Vital to the Economic Health” was conducted; wherein experts voiced their opinion and the session Moderated by Mr S B Dangayach, Founder Trustee, Innovative Thought Forum

 

• Mr Chandra B Chakraborty, Senior VP and Regional Head – East & West, Amway India
• Mr Dharmesh Pandya, Assistant Manager, The Centre for Entrepreneurship Development
• Mr Dineshkumar Rathi, Marketing Manager, Life Insurance Corporation of India
• Ms. Nikita Maheshwari, Co-founder, Tilebazzar & Tatkalorry

 

Followed by this, the speakers had addressed various questions by the participants at the sessions. This interactive session was attended by around 160 +participants.