Category: Technology

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Technology

Flipkart and Niti Aayog Collaborate To Enhance Women Entrepreneurship Platform To Help Women Entrepreneurs in India; All You Need To Know About the WEP

Women entrepreneurs in India (Photo Credits: Unsplash)

New Delhi, January 12: With an aim to enhance community experience for women entrepreneurs in India, e-commerce marketplace Flipkart and NITI Aayog have joined hands to launch the revamped Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP). The WEP is a unified access portal which brings together women from parts of India to realise their entrepreneurial aspirations. Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Chief Executive Officer of the Flipkart Group, said MSMEs and start-ups have enabled the industry to better understand their challenges and needs.

The vision of the two partners- Flipkart and NITI Aayog is to make ‘Community’ a very interactive, rewarding and intuitive question and answer platform leveraging WEP resources. Through this, the entrepreneurs can utilise it for fruitful discussions and for sharing knowledge, ultimately benefiting the women entrepreneurs’ ecosystem in India.

Women entrepreneurs face unique obstacles, right from a lack of networking opportunities and mentors to the challenge of balancing work and family. When women come together or form communities, they are better equipped to tackle challenges that come their way, and shared experiences from mentors and professionals can further help them to take their passion and entrepreneurial ambition to new heights.

The idea of the platform was first mooted by NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant who announced the setting-up of a Women Entrepreneurship Platform at 8th Global Entrepreneurship Summit held in Hyderabad during 2017, with an overarching theme of ‘Women First, Prosperity for All.’

Here’s all you need to know about Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP):

  1. The Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP) is a first of its kind, unified access portal.
  2. It aims to bring together women from different parts of India to realize their entrepreneurial aspirations.
  3. The revamped version will also include an additional feature to offer mentorship to the women mentees with specific knowledge concerning a problem area through a dedicated online mechanism facilitated under FICCI-FLO’s empowering the Greater 50% mission, it added.
  4. The ‘Community’ on the WEP platform aims to connect women entrepreneurs seeking clarifications on aspects of setting up new businesses with those who have experience in setting up businesses and hence can contribute by solving queries.
  5. These include queries like registering businesses, GST, funding, effects of the pandemic, progressing already established businesses.

Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant hopes that the WEP will become a digital place for entrepreneurs to not only seek information and support, but also help each other out. He said the WEP will serve as a forum for people’s voices to be heard – helping inform policies and programs to better suit the needs and requirements of people.

Meanwhile, Krishnamurthy said as a homegrown company, the constant and intense engagement with local Indian businesses, MSMEs and start-ups has enabled us to better understand their challenges and needs, adding that the WEP plays a critical role in uplifting and empowering women-led businesses in their growth ambition.

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Business motivation Startup Strategy Technology

PM Narendra Modi Urges Youngsters To Join ‘Prarambh’, the Startup India International Summit on January 15-16; Here’s How To Register Online

Startups (Photo Credits: Unsplash)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called upon youngsters of India to attend ‘Prarambh’, the Startup India international summit on January 15 and 16. The Prime Minister asserted that the summit seeks to bring together top minds from industry, academia, investment, banking and finance besides young start up leaders. Taking to Twitter, the Prime Minister shared his LinkedIn post in which he noted that virtual interactions have become the new normal during the COVID-19 pandemic and said a big advantage of this is that people can be a part of programmes sitting at home. “With most events being held virtually, it has given a great opportunity for youngsters to be a part of many interesting domestic & global forums. One such opportunity is coming up in the form of Prarambh on 15-16 Jan. I urge our youth to be a part of it,” Modi tweeted on Monday.

Referring to the ‘Prarambh’ summit, the prime minister said India would also be marking five years since the Startup India initiative began. He said that this initiative has propelled India to being among the most attractive start-up eco-systems globally. Lauding the capabilities of the youths in India, the Prime Minister said that no words can do justice to the spirit of India’s youth. “Their penchant for innovation has led to outstanding results. Our start-up heroes are not merely coming from big cities but also from smaller towns. This is a good sign,” he added

Talking about the work from home opportunities, the Prime Minister noted and said work from home is in, so is greater adapting to technology. “For me, it meant more programmes online, which were extremely productive and insightful. There were interactions with scientists, medical professionals, COVID warriors, academics, industry leaders, young innovators, spiritual leaders and more,” Modi said.

The Prime Minister added that there were virtual summits, both bilaterals and multilaterals with world leaders, he noted, adding that “path-breaking” development schemes were launched through public events organised digitally.

About Prarambh:

‘Prarambh’ – Startup India International Summit – on 15 and 16 January 2021 in a virtual format. It will be organised by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Ministry of Commerce and Industry. ‘Prarambh’ means ‘an auspicious beginning’. As a verb, it implies ‘to start’.

The idea is to attain attention of global capital for startups in India, mobilize domestic capital, provide opportunities for accessing international markets to our startups and evolve enabling policy provisions.  The first day of the Summit has been devoted to host dignitaries and stakeholders from BIMSTEC member States. The day will witness participation of renowned stakeholders from startup communities of BIMSTEC member states engaging in multilateral discussions and showcasing best of their innovations.

Here’s How You Can Register for the Prarambh Summit:

  1. Youngsters can registered themselves on the official site i.e. https://www.theprarambh.in
  2. Click on ‘Register Now’ at the top of the page and fill in all the details that have been asked.
  3. Enter details like your name, address, email-id, sector, select country and state, city and category and then click on ‘Submit’.
  4. Youngsters can check the official website as it has all the details of the 2-day Start-up India International Summit.

The main objectives of the Prarambh Summit are given below:

  • Encouraging and inspiring the youth for innovation and entrepreneurship
  • Exchange knowledge on best practices on nurturing startup ecosystems
  • Develop capacities of entrepreneurial ecosystem
  • Mobilize global and domestic capital for investments into startups
  • Provide opportunities to startups for entering domestic (private and public) and international markets
  • Showcasing high-quality, high technology and frugal innovations from India
  • Enable ease of doing business for startups and investors.

The who’s who of the Indian as well as global Startup ecosystem are making a beeline for this event. Please mark this date for a marathon of in-depth knowledge sessions and exchange of global ideas! Prarambh is expected to bring together top policy makers, industry, academia, investors, startups and all stakeholders from across the globe. In addition to deliberating on good practices from best of the ecosystems across the world, the sessions of the Summit are designed to showcase the spread and depth of entrepreneurship based on innovation in India.

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Technology

Indian Businesses Aim To Tap Consumers Directly in 2021 via Digital Platforms, Says Report

Bengaluru, January 7: As the economy limps back to normalcy, India’s focus will now be more on the digital side in terms of growing businesses. According to a new report, as the economy recovers from the lull caused by COVID-19 pandemic, businesses are preparing flexible models that operate in an online-offline mix. Moreover, the focus for digital platforms in India will be on selling directly to the consumers in 2021, the report said. “Small businesses in India are today evolving themselves as per the consumer and industry requirements”, it added.

According to the findings, entrepreneurs today understand the power of online presence and digital operations. “There has been a 3 times growth in unique businesses creating online stores,” the report mentioned. The payment gateway and ecommerce platform has on-boarded more than 2 lakh small businesses from tier II and tier III cities during the lockdown period. Akash Gehani COO & Co-founder, Instamojo, was quoted by IANS saying that small businesses are hungry for growth and much more resilient than we could’ve imagined. “Merchants have come to understand the diverse nature of consumers and that innovation is the key differentiator,” he said.

Instamojo had launched a report on the e-commerce outlook for 2021 which draws the experiences of more than a million small businesses across the country. Explaining how online presence has grown over the years, Gehani explained that small businesses owners are making necessary changes to their brands, to the way they operate, and also the way they deal with their customers online in order to survive in the growing e-commerce space. He said that more than 70 percent of these entrepreneurs had no prior online presence.

The report by IANS said that as a large number of businesses went online in 2020, they also recognised the importance of a wide social media presence. MojoVersity, Instamojo’s e-learning platform for entrepreneurs, saw a 9 times growth in enrolments and 11 times growth in the number of merchants getting digitally certified in 2020. The number of businesses updating their social media handles on their Instamojo online store went up an average of 30 percent (QoQ).

“As more entrepreneurs emerge from smaller towns and cities in India, accelerators and incubators are also expanding their services into markets to help nurture the upcoming businesses. Industry reports indicate that 40 percent of investors will come from Tier II and Tier III cities,” report added.

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Technology

3 Technological Trends that will define the future!

tech trends

Hijacked by a pandemic that affected millions, 2020 has been quite a year. The world has experienced a lot of uncertainty and some of the most devastating moments.

But as every challenge brings an opportunity within itself, this global pandemic also brought impressive future technology trends. There have been leaps and bounds in innovation as the organizations are accelerating their initiatives at breakneck speed.

For better as well as for the worse, we can all agree that the past year will be memorable. As we all have entered 2021, here are 3 top future technology trends that are going to define the next normal:

Cloud Technology

Even before the COVID-19 could strike us, the ‘cloud technology’ had established its value. Be it a small business or giant companies, it provided scalability, agility, and enhanced cost efficiency across multiple industries.

According to a report by ‘business today’, the cloud computing industry is expected to grow from $371.4 billion in 2020 to $832.1 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 17.5%.

In the changed scenario, where employees are working from home, cloud technology has emerged as one of the future technology trends. This sudden shift in working habits has made cloud`s place an integral part of every enterprise.

Artificial Intelligence

With speech and image recognition, personal assistants in smartphones, navigation apps, ride-sharing apps, etc, Artificial Intelligence or AI, has already created a lot-of-buzz. However, this technology trend will remain one of the most popular future software technology. Due to the effects, AI has on how we live, work, play, and think, it will continue to evolve.

Machine Data Revolution

As consumer behavior has changed drastically, for the companies who are trying to keep up with this sudden shift, the stakes are high.

According to a Deloitte report, ‘the end-users have less and less patience for the kind of latency that legacy systems and data models often deliver. The optimum latency time between click and desired response is less than 50 milliseconds—any longer and users become irritated by the delay and make “executive decisions” themselves.’

Hence, to achieve the benefits of implying AI, data must be generated for machine consumption, and not humans, to increase their competitive advantage.

The year 2021 is going to be the year of constant learning, unlearning, and relearning with these tech trends that will grow exponentially. So what does this mean for you? It means you will have to stay abreast with these innovative future technology trends for a safe and better tomorrow. Make the most of today by upgrading yourself to mint the growing job opportunities or scale-up your business with these tech trends.

Learn some of the most effective strategies from leaders on the front line with our online business training courses. To know more visit https://www.badabusiness.com/psc?ref_code=ArticlesLeads

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Startup Technology

4 Ways to Grow Your Business Online Without Spending a Lot of Money

Online Business
Online Business

Going digital is the trend today, so if you have an online business, it will surely grow over the time without any doubt. If you are planning to  start an online business, then you cannot afford to waste money at the initial stage. You don’t have to put in a lot of money into growing an online business. In reality, there are certain things that you can do  without spending any money at all. It just takes little creativity, effort and imagination. Take a look at these 4 ways to grow your business online with a small budget.

Create Rich Content Online

Rich content will always attract readers. Whether it’s a company blog or a product description, Creating high-quality content should be the main focus. For this, you need to really think out of the box and be creative enough to lure the readers with you writing skills. Use facts appropriately and try and engage the readers so that they are engrossed in the write-up. Only if this happens, your online business. In short, it is all about how well you can manage to engage the audience with what they need.

Design Layout and Presentation

The first thing about online content is how it looks when the reader sees it. The layout of the firm, be it any firm, should be appealing to the eye. It shouldn’t be tacky and haphazardly presented. You need to understand your target audience first- youngsters, middle-aged or any other category, and choose colours and layouts accordingly. You should remember that more than one-third of visitors will leave a site if the layout is poor. All that you should keep in mind is the choice of the colour, graphics and even the overall layout of the site. Your aim should be to deliver a pleasant visual and functional experience to people visiting the website.

Watch: Low Investment | Business Idea | Dr Vivek Bindra 

Be Mobile-Friendly

Not everyone carries a laptop or a tab everywhere they go, right? So the basic thing that one should keep in mind is to have a mobile-friendly website. Most people these days surf online from their smartphones. Your website should have a mobile variant like an app so that it becomes hassle-free for your customers.

Be an Active Participant in Online Communities and Use social media

Social media can help your business reach more than lakhs of people in single day. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms have highly engaged users and can help you fetch business and establish your brand identity. Moreover, be active in online communities where people go to post their questions, find content, and explore. Top communities on the internet that are really popular include Reddit, Quora, TripAdvisor among others.

 

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Technology

‘Nayi Shuruaat’, a Campaign Launched by Facebook to Celebrate the Success of Small Businesses in India Amid Crisis; All You Need to Know

Facebook (Photo Credits: Pexels)

In a bid to spread the success of the small business and their growth in India, social media giant Facebook on Tuesday launched ‘Nayi Shuruaat’. The newly launched campaign celebrates the small businesses of across the country. The campaign will help these businesses crawl back to normalcy and make a new start or a ‘Nayi Shuruaat’ amidst the deepest crisis the world has seen in recent times. The campaign by Facebook celebrates many such real stories of optimism, strength, and economic recovery from across the country. Facebook on Tuesday said that it is committed to help India quickly recover economically and socially in 2021 from the pandemic-hit year, by deepening support for small businesses and test and roll its new features from the country to the rest of the world.

About ‘Nayi Shuruaat’ campaign:

  1. The ‘Nayi Shuruaat’ campaign was launched during Facebook’s ‘Fuel for India’ event. It is an ode to the resilience of small businesses amid crisis.
  2. Nayi Shuruaat celebrates many such real stories of optimism, strength, and economic recovery from across the country
  3. Several such stories were also be unveiled during the upcoming Facebook Fuel for India virtual event on December 15 and December 16.
  4. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg via a virtual address during the event said that India’s building local capabilities and tech capacity to power innovative new business models and provide the citizens access to digital financial inclusion.

Facebook said it will continue to work closely with key partners to build a stronger ecosystem for small business growth in the country by investing in skilling programmes such as Boost with Facebook, entering in key partnerships such as with venture capital funds for the VC Brand Incubator program, and by giving people new ways to support small businesses such as the Instagram Food Stickers.

Zuckerberg on Tuesday said its partnership with Jio Platforms will help support millions of small businesses in India. Zuckerberg made the remark during a conversation with Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries at the first Facebook Fuel for India 2020 event.

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Technology

Eric Yuan, Founder and CEO of Zoom, Named ‘Businessperson of Year 2020’ by TIME Magazine

Eric Yuan (Photo Credits: Twitter)

Eric Yuan, founder and CEO of Zoom, has been named the ‘Businessperson of the 2020’ by TIME Magazine for the growth of his video conferencing platform amid the coronavirus pandemic. Yuan, who began at WebEx as a coder, soon became integral to the creation of his video-conferencing platform that served as a communication medium for millions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The birth of Zoom by the 50-year-old founder and CEO became successful after he struggled for a decade to build the no-frills, highly functional conferencing platform for businesses. With his determination and hardwork, Zoom was now being used in all sorts of unexpected places, from delivery rooms to grade schools.

Zoom’s popularity grew in 2020 as the world was hit with the pandemic at start of the year, which forced people to stay indoors, maintain social distancing and work from home. With the pandemic spreading its arms over the world, Zoom started growing with leaps and bounds, helping people to continue with the work through online mode. The video conferencing platform allows individuals to communicate virtually face to face. Zoom is now in the business of connecting everybody, originally intended for businesses and universities. Business Ideas For 2021: Here Are 4 Business Ideas Which You Can Start Next Year.

“We never thought about consumers or K-12 schools when we started planning the year 2020,” Yuan was quoted by TIME while speaking over Zoom from his home in the Bay Area. He had ordered employees to work from home in early March, but it wasn’t until weeks later—around when U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted a photo of a Cabinet meeting over Zoom—that it dawned on Yuan that his company might play a major role in this new virtual world order.

Yuan soon found himself serving as the world’s relationship liaison, social chair, principal, convention-center host, chief security officer and pallbearer. Despite competition from corporate behemoths like Google, Apple and Microsoft, Zoom jumped out in front of the video pack, catapulting from 10 million daily meeting participants in December to a staggering 300 million in April. Zoom became a verb and a prefix, a defining syllable of a socially distant era. As his company’s valuation soared, Yuan crashed into the Forbes billionaires list.

Zoom’s software was released in 2013, promoting a free basic service for different-size organisations along with many paid levels. Although many other startups relied heavily on free goods to cause widespread saturation, Zoom targeted modest school and company networks that would pay year after year for subscriptions.

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MSME Technology

Paytm to Double Loan Disbursement for MSMEs From Rs 550 Crore in Last Fiscal Year to Rs 1,000 Crore by March 2021

Paytm (Photo Credits: Facebook)

New Delhi, November 9: In a major boost to the micro- and small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), financial services platform Paytm on Monday announced to double its loan disbursements for the MSMEs from Rs 550 crore in last fiscal year to Rs 1,000 crore by March 2021. The firm said that it has company expanded collateral-free loans of up to Rs 5,00,000 at a low-interest rate and unique daily EMI product customised for micro-merchants.

Paytm continues to lead the offline payments (P2M) segment with over 50 percent market share by offering all digital payment methods. Bhavesh Gupta, CEO, Paytm Lending was quoted by IANS saying that with the firm’s collateral-free instant loans, it is trying to help kirana stores and other small business owners who have been left behind by the traditional banking sector and do not have easy access to loans and credit.

According to a report by IANS, the company informed that the recently launched Paytm All-in-One Android POS device has enabled over two lakh MSMEs to accept all payment modes. The company said it will continue to offer collateral-free loans under the ‘Merchant Lending Programme’ in Paytm for Business app. The firm said it has digitised the entire process starting from the loan application, approval to disbursal with no additional documents required in partnership with NBFCs and banks.

Rrports inform that in the last financial year, the company processed loans worth Rs 550 crore, benefiting over a lakh merchant partner. “Going forward, we will especially focus on EDC merchants and provide higher loan amounts based on their EDC transactions,” Gupta said.

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Technology

Facebook Rolls Out ‘SMB Guide’ to Help 9 Million Indian SMBs in Building Digital Presence and Reaching Potential Customers Online

Facebook (Photo Credits: Pexels)

New Delhi, November 4: With an aim to help the micro and small businesses in India to limp back to normalcy, social media giant Facebook on Wednesday rolled out a dedicated offline to online ‘SMB Guide’. In order to help these businesses recover from the pandemic-induced crisis, Facebook has come up with new resources to help make this journey frictionless for them. Reports inform that this offline to online SMB Guide for India is free and publicly available. However, the social networking giant is also proactively reaching out to nine million small businesses across the country to ensure it reaches the businesses who need it the most.

The SMB Guide is available in Hindi as well as in English in order to support a large number of businesses across distinct geographies. Archana Vohra, Director Small and Medium Businesses, Facebook India, said in a statement said that the new resources are geared to helping the smallest of businesses across geographies to move from offline to online with minimum effort. “”While the offline to online SMB Guide is publicly available, we are proactively reaching out to 9 million small businesses across India to ensure timely support”, she said.

The SMB Guide:

According to a report by IANS, the SMB Guide has been designed to provide a step-by-step direction on how the smallest of businesses can build a digital presence quickly, and reach potential customers online. The guide covers Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, and key themes such as building an online presence, mobile storytelling, social media advertising, and creative and performance strategies.

The social networking giant said it is also rolling out the next leg of ‘Boost with Facebook’, a skilling and learning programme for scaling young businesses. The programme went virtual earlier this year, and is now going vernacular, and will be delivered primarily in Hindi through Facebook Live sessions. One of the key themes discussed during Boost with Facebook will be how small businesses can build for Diwali and the festive season beyond it, the company said.

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Technology

‘MSME Prerana’, an Online Business Mentoring Programme Launched for MSMEs; Here’s All You Need to Know

Online Business
Online Business

Chennai, October 7: ‘MSME Prerana’, an online business mentoring programme for MSMEs by state-run Indian Bank has been launched. The initiative was launched by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on October 6. The online programme will be made available in local languages and is aimed at empowering entrepreneurs through skill development and capacity building workshops. Sitharaman launched the initiative at the Indian Bank’s corporate centre in Chennai.  During the launch, Sitharaman said Indian Bank has taken an out-of-the-box initiative in launching MSME Prerana which will handhold the entrepreneurs through a mentoring program.

The Finance Minister added saying that this novel initiative shall further inspire others in the banking sector to adopt similar measures. Financial Services Secretary Debashish Panda, who also participated in the launch event through video conferencing, delved on the various initiatives taken by the government to support MSMEs.

About ‘MSME Prerana’ Programme:

  1. The ‘MSME Prerana’ initiative is in collaboration with Poornatha & Co, a firm that designs entrepreneurial development programs in vernacular languages using online web-based interactive sessions and case studies.
  2. The first two programs will be in Tamil for the Coimbatore clusters of Indian Bank. It will then be scaled up across the country in Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali and Gujarati, the Bank statement said.
  3. Spread over 12 sessions, the program enables MSME entrepreneurs to acquire expertise in handling finance and managerial skills, capacity to handle crises in business, understand the dynamics of credit rating and risk management.
  4. While the sessions on managerial and financial skills will be conducted by Poornatha & Co, the banking related topics will be handled by Indian Bank.
  5. MSME Prerana is our effort to bridge this gap in the skill sets. It is a business mentoring program that gives inputs in simple terms (no jargon) and in the local vernacular.
  6. On successful completion of the online programme, all participants would get a certificate, issued jointly by Indian Bank, Poornatha & Co and MADE (Michigan Academy for Developing Entrepreneurs), USA.

The lender’s Managing Director and CEO Padmaja Chunduru said during its outreach programs, webinars and interaction with the bank”s MSME units, one main takeaway was that there is still a lot of dependence on chartered accountants or agents to access bank loans.

Chunduru added that the barriers these MSMEs face include language, confusion about what the bank looks for when they approach for loans, how to manage cash flows, which government schemes are available and suitable for them and how to register themselves for these schemes.