Building Entrepreneurship And Making The Global Connect
Date: Mon May 18, 2015 - Mon May 18, 2015
Location: Sri Aurobindo Institute of Indian Culture, Shillong , Hosts: Asian Confluence
Location: Sri Aurobindo Institute of Indian Culture, Shillong , Hosts: Asian Confluence
In its mission to support social and economic growth in Northeast India, Asian Confluence in collaboration with Indo-German Chamber of Commerce (IGCC) organised a seminar to connect leading and emerging Northeast Indian entrepreneurs with an elite advisory pool of experts from the Senior Expert Services program. The objective of the seminar was to trigger a sustained engagement between the two diverse communities that will enable entrepreneurs in the Northeast to shape and drive their businesses by leveraging the collective knowledge and thought-leadership available via the IGCC. Similarly, this initiative will pave the way for international industry experts to develop greater awareness of the challenges local business leaders and entrepreneurs face in the region and their innovative efforts to transcend these challenges.
The one-day brainstorming session saw Mr. Rainer Schmiedchen, the German Consul General, addressing an audience of young entrepreneurs, students and teachers where he made a presentation on entrepreneurship lending weightage to the Prime Minister’s “Make in India” campaign. In his inaugural speech, he highlighted the need for vocational training at the level of school, college and university, to make them job ready by the time they graduate and make it easier for companies to absorb them. Additionally he emphasised on the Double Education System, which focuses more on practice than theory. This model has been quite successful in Germany and Mr. Schmiedchen stressed that if India needed to bridge its huge youth unemployment gap and turn its demographic dividend into an asset, then it has to emulate the model. He cited the example of industries in Germany where they work closely with Universities, so that theoretical and practical knowledge are well integrated.
Mr. M. P. Bezbaruah, Member North Eastern Council rued the fact that the North Eastern states export raw materials and have allowed value addition to happen outside. He pointed to the large imports of meat and vegetables from outside the region and lamented that Tourism sector is yet to take off in the region. Prof Ashoke Kumar Dutta, founding director of IIM Shillong, pointed out that “We need to source excellence to break the cycle of poverty which entraps us. We have to get investments in clean industries and create a congenial climate for that to happen”.
Meghalaya Chief Secretary, P. B. O. Warjri endorsed the need to give dignity to all kinds of manual labour and opined that India needs to stop the brain drain and create a climate where innovations can happen. A presentation by the IGCC on the German Dual System of Education was made by Sabina Pandey who explained that the availability of skilled labour had kept the unemployment rate in Germany at 7% which is the lowest in the European Union.
Mr. Rainer Schmiedchen insisted on having a better infrastructure in Meghalaya for the tourism industry to blossom. Later while addressing the media persons, he stressed on having a better airport in the state and opined that more private airline companies should operate in the region to connect it with mainland. Reacting to a query on women entrepreneurs, he said that Germany has been organizing special programmes for women and they want atleast 50 percent of women in every company.
Asian Confluence invited business owners, small scale, and aspirational entrepreneurs, small business owners, students of business management, leaders of non-governmental organizations (devoted to value chain and livelihood creation) to participate in the one-day seminar to network, seek information, discuss synergies, seek expertise, and develop foundational relationships. Policy makers and heads of governmental agencies active in the promotion of entrepreneurship development were also invited as guests.
