Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: Not-for-profit Wadhwani Foundation and mentorship platform VMentor.ai on Tuesday announced a strategic collaboration to set up India’s first MSME incubator. The alliance will offer specialised and subsidised mentoring by industry veterans to eligible MSMEs with a revenue turnover between Rs 5 crore and Rs 100 crore to help them grow quicker and with a more strategic outlook than what MSMEs’ own capacities would have allowed, the company said in a statement.
The combined frameworks and tools of the two mentor organisations – Wadhwani Advantage (SME initiative by Wadhwani Foundation) and VMentor.ai — would allow a Do-It-Yourself (DIY), a high-impact delivery model for smaller companies and an adviser-led consulting and project management delivery model for larger companies, the statement said.
“Our strategic partnership with VMentor.ai is a win-win for both the organizations as both of us have a mission to help MSMEs by accelerating their growth. We, at Wadhwani Foundation, are on a larger mission of reducing unemployment, which is one of the long-standing and biggest problems of the country,” said Samir Sathe, Executive Vice-President, Wadhwani Advantage.
The incubator will support MSMEs in strategy and implementation, optimising and customising the functional areas of HR, finance, marketing and sales, operations, supply chain, IT, strategy and compliance, and leveraging government policies. The programme will also lead to a community platform where MSMEs can access hundreds of knowledge assets, courses, and master classes, it said.
“It marks the beginning of a business-changing experience for select MSMEs who are eligible and become part of our target group. They would go through an assessment process and get mentored by industry experts and supported by Project Management Officers (PMOs) to deliver targeted improvements for enhanced business results,” said Sanjiv Tripathy, President, MSME, VMentor.ai.
Wadhwani Advantage programme uses artificial intelligence-enabled technology mobile platforms to help small businesses scale faster and create jobs. The company helps SMEs to survive and grow faster by underlining the root problem with product, innovation, geography, customer, capital, and people. According to the programme’s website, it has worked with over 1,000 SMEs across more than 25 industries to help in their 2-5x revenue growth.
