NIESBUD to catalyse entrepreneurship and support India’s shift to knowledge-based economy

Dr. Mahendra Nath Pandey, Hon’ble Union Minister for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship reviewed the activities conducted by NIESBUD and gave clear directions on tightening the empanelment process to ensure quality of training partners in the ecosystem. The Minister said that there should be focused on delivery, content and quality of the courses being imparted by NIESBUD.

Dr. Pandey said this while presiding the 34^th Meeting of the General Council of The National Institute for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development (NIESBUD), which was held on 1st August 2019, after a period of 2.5 years. The last meeting was held in 2016. It was discussed and decided by the members of the council that in order to bring transparency and effectiveness to the collaborative training activities, the guidelines for Empanelment of Training Partners need to be revisited.

• The National Institute for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development (NIESBUD) has been engaged in imparting entrepreneurial skills nationally and internationally and has so trained more than 44000 participants across 1465 training programs in the year 2018-19.
• NIESBUD has provided training to close to 12 lakh persons through close to 44,000 different training programmes since its inception. This includes more than 4000 international participants hailing from more than 140 countries throughout the globe.

“NIESBUD should emerge as a catalyst for entrepreneurship development in the country” – Dr. Mahendra Nath Pandey at 34^th Meeting of Governing Council of NIESBUD

Addressing the members of the council, Dr. Pandey said, “The road to a $5 trillion economy is rooted in enhanced productivity, formalization of economy, heavy focus on modernization and urbanization, planned investments and strengthening our human resource, thus reaping our demographic dividend. Entrepreneurship along with the Micro & Small enterprises will play a vital role in propelling India to this goal, as per the vision of the Prime Minister. It is important we motivate our youth and tap into their creative potential to make India a leading knowledge and innovation hub.”

He also laid emphasis on development of Swadeshi Entrepreneurs for meeting the burgeoning domestic demand. He, however, added a word of caution that domestic producers should focus upon ‘quality’ and ‘pricing’ of their products to remain competitive in an environment where the entire world has become a big “global market”.

Dr. Pandey said, “NIESBUD will have to emerge as a catalyst in the entrepreneurial climate that we are creating in the country. It has to support other government programs like Make in India, Start Up India, Stand Up India, etc. It needs to scale up its reach right from the national to the block level ensuring ‘cluster vikas’ where it does hard and soft interventions to enhance skill, productivity and income of the people across segments.”

The Hon’ble Minister also added that “The NIESBUD ecosystem should eventually move towards a digitized format which supports e-payments by persons directly, access to digi-locker which will have a digitally signed e-certificate with a unique ID for each participant. We should have one common portal which should aggregate all kinds of certifications under Skill India.”

Dr. K.P. Krishnan, Secretary, MSDE informed the Members that the Institute is keen to develop and implement new Entrepreneurship Modules such as ‘Double Your Income Plans’ for self-employed persons engaged in different activities comprised in Religious Tourism in Varanasi and contiguous areas viz; Boat Rowers (Mallahas); Auto-Rickshaw Drivers; Sweet-sellers; Flower-sellers etc., in a strict time bound manner.

Earlier, Shri Rajesh Aggarwal, Director General, NIESBUD, delivering the Welcome Address on the occasion, apprised the Members that the Institute is soon recommencing its collaborative training activities in association with Model institutions working at grass-root levels and fulfilling the basic requirements of its accreditation process. This will escalate the outreach of various activities of NIESBUD and also extend the entrepreneurial message to the length and breadth of the country.

NIESBUD also actively supports the training of PMKVY trainers through its 5-day module workshop called – Employability, Entrepreneurship and LifeSkills and has conducted a total of 90 programs through which 2002 trainers have been trained. Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship has introduced a mandatory module on entrepreneurship across all short-term training and long-term training courses which are supported by NIESBUD. It has also been made mandatory that all trainers of Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) should have a certification from institutions namely NIESBUD, Indian Institute of Entrepreneurship (IIE) etc.