The central government has introduced several schemes and initiatives to promote entrepreneurship among tribal and rural farmers in the agriculture industry. These schemes are bringing together self-help groups among farming communities and enabling them to become financially independent and technologically savvy.

What is the PMFME scheme?

The Prime Minister’s Formalisation of Micro Food Enterprises (PMFME) scheme is a central and state government scheme for farmers. Under this scheme, aspiring entrepreneurs in the agriculture sector can avail INR 10 Lakh in funding to start their business. Aimed at doubling the income of farmers, PMFME is implemented under the ‘One District One Product’ program. The scheme became operational in 2021-2021 and will go on until 2024-25, facilitating the setup of 2 lakh micro processing units during the period of 5 years.

Support for micro food enterprises

Credit linked subsidy

Micro food processing enterprises will receive upgrade support by the Government through PMFME scheme. The enterprises will be set up or upgraded through credit linked subsidy. The enterprises will also enjoy financial, technical, and business support. Eligible projects can avail credit-linked capital subsidy at 35% of the project cost with a maximum ceiling of INR 10 Lakh per unit.

Capacity building or training support

Enterprises availing capital investment as well as other existing units will be provided capacity building or training support in the following focus areas

Areas of focus

• • • • Entrepreneurship development
      • Marketing
      • Bookkeeping
      • Registration
      • Compliance with FSSAI standards
      • Udyog Aadhar
      • GST Registration
      • General hygiene
      • Other essential functions

Specially designed training

The micro enterprise units will go through specially designed training for focus areas like machine operations, hygiene issues, procurement, packaging, storage, new product development, etc.

Success rate of the PMFME scheme

PMFME is a centrally sponsored scheme under the Aatmanirbhar Bharat initiative by the Ministry of Food Processing Industry (MoFPI). In the span of one year since its launch, PMFME has been implemented in 35 states and Union Territories. Milestones achieved in one year include launch of the GIS (Geographic Information System) digital map for all states and UTs. Agreements and MoUs (Memorandum of Understanding) were signed with 11 banks that are official lending partners of PMFME, and the Union Bank of India which is the Nodal Bank for the scheme. The National Rural Livelihood Mission sanctioned INR 25.25 Cr to 8040 SHG members (Self Help Group) as seed capital. MoUs were signed with NAFED (National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India) and TRIFED (Tribal Cooperative Marketing Federation of India) for Marketing and Branding support.

When lockdowns were announced in the first wave of the pandemic, we witnessed the mass exodus of migrant workers eager to go back to their natives. The situation was distressing. Loss of jobs, no food and water, trains and buses stalled, and a fear of contracting the virus, forced these poor migrant workers to reach home via foot and bicycle. Pained by such incidents, Sonu Sood emerged as the Samaritan, who arranged ten buses for the migrant workers staying in Mumbai to travel back to their homes in Karnataka in the nationwide lockdown imposed.

The saying necessity is the mother of invention stands in its truest form with Sonu Sood’s recent B2B entrepreneurial venture- Travel Union, in the travel and hospitality space catering to the travel needs of rural consumers.

The pandemic has wrecked several sectors, but the maximum damage took place in the travel and hospitality sector. According to a report from KPMG, the Covid-19 crisis might render job losses worth 38 million in the Indian tourism and hospitality sector, ie.70 percent of its workforce employed.

In terms of revenue losses, a report from Thomas Cook India reveals that the consolidated loss in FY 21 amounts to Rs 416 crore from Rs 69 crore in 2020.

What is Travel Union?

Witnessing the difficulties faced by the rural travellers, Sonu Sood realised that the travel sector is highly unorganised in smaller cities and towns Travel Union is an assisted rural digital travel services platform through which a rural traveller can book a train, bus, flights tickets, and book hotels at competitive prices. The Travel Union app is available in English and Hindi language and plans to launch in 11 more languages.

Micro VC firms are emerging rapidly. Unlike large Venture Capital firms, micro-VC’s nurture small corpuses and are dedicated to funding early-stage start-ups with seed rounds, something that’s hard to acquire from bigger VCs. They cater to niche markets and play a vital role in boosting the start-up ecosystem in these markets.

Who is Fluid Ventures? 

Fluid Ventures is an early-stage Micro VC (venture capital) firm that’s registered with SEBI (Securities Exchange Board of India) as an Alternative Investment Fund Category – I VC fund. Launched in 2019, Fluid Ventures was initially poised to work with start-ups in the B2B and B2C space. They provide financial capital and have a robust start-up support system for recruitment, marketing, accounting, taxation, compliance mentoring, CXO coaching, fund mobilisation, and legal services.

Fluid Ventures advisory board consists of stakeholders including Manish Aggarwal, co-founder of Start-up Buddy, Prashant Narang, co-founder of Agility ventures, Chittransh Verma of India Partner Arc Group, Rakhee Singal, Compliance Officer of Start-up Buddy and Divij Bajaj, CEO of Power Gummies.

Their tryst with the D2C segment

Fluid ventures has completed the first close of their debut D2C (direct-to-consumer) focused fund. This fund will invest in D2C brands and its first close has occurred at INR 25 Cr published and a tentative INR 30 Cr for D2C start-ups. Their first scheme is in collaboration with Start-up Buddy and Agility Ventures. A category I fund, it has a target corpus of INR 80 Cr. Offering a check size of up to INR 4 Cr, Fluid Ventures will fund 15-18 emerging D2C brands within the next 3 years. Homegrown consumer start-ups stand a chance of winning checks from this investment fund.

Why they are funding D2C

Indian D2C brands have raised more than $2.04 Billion since 2014 and this segment is the next big wave in India. Owing to limited funding options available in the market for D2C currently, Fluid Ventures is hoping to bridge the gap. Amidst the pandemic, D2C and vertical commerce start-ups have instilled confidence among investors towards e-commerce. Between the first quarter Q1 of 2020 and the second quarter Q2 of 2021, total funds raised by D2C start-ups registered an average quarterly growth of 93%. Besides, India has one D2C unicorn which is significant since there are only 20 other D2C unicorns abroad. Through this initiative, Fluid ventures wants to encourage large investors to create more success stories in this segment.

D2C categories and funding rounds they are interested in

Fluid Ventures wants to invest in segments like food and beverages, beauty, personal care, lifestyle, home products in D2C. They are looking forward to participating in Seed, Pre-Series A, Series A and follow-up rounds for start-ups.

When the world was sleeping and unaware of how glamorous and feminine business and entrepreneurship could be, one woman, Kim Kardashian single-handedly built a business empire for herself and her family. We are now coming to terms with solopreneurs, womenpreneurs, and mompreneurs. But Kim Kardashian had already built a multi-billion-dollar beauty and wellness empire when the rest of the world was still playing catch up.  

Who is Kim Kardashian?

Kim Kardashian is a reality TV star, an ex-stylist and now a beauty Moghul. She has a glamorous brand persona, a star-studded net worth, and is one of the biggest international celebrities. Kim paved her way into the cosmetics, and fashion industry by leveraging the power of social media during its budding days. 

Kim Kardashian’s Business Portfolio

Kim Kardashian has a very vast business portfolio centred around her stint as a producer to her family’s Reality TV Show. Her portfolio is spread out across exclusive media appearances, collaborations with the who’s-who of the beauty, fashion, and media world. Currently, her prominent business ventures include:

KKW Beauty

KKW (Kim Kardashian West) Beauty is a cosmetic and beauty brand famous for its body make up, body tape products, lip, and face make up products which is currently undergoing a rebranding exercise to adopt a more sustainable approach. It is estimated to be valued at $1 Bn. 

Skims

Skims is a shapewear and undergarment brand famous for its inclusive bodysuits, and loungewear, estimated to be worth $1.6 Bn. Through the brand, Kim Kardashian is promoting body positivity since her products cater to men and women of all shapes and sizes. 

Keeping up with the Kardashians

At the crux of Kim’s business portfolio is Keeping up with the Kardashians, a reality TV show she co-produced with her family for a long duration of 20 Seasons and which recently concluded. KUWTK has left behind a long legacy and has propelled Kim Kardashian to the pinnacle of stardom.

Endorsement Deals

Kim Kardashian endorses and collaborates with the top designers, make-up artists and brands of the fashion world including the likes of Chanel, Versace, and Mugler. She has appearances at top fashion events including the Met Gala and Paris Fashion Week. 

Instagram Ads

Kim Kardashian does sponsored Instagram posts for luxury brands and products in beauty, health, wellness, makeup, jewellery, cosmetics, and apparel. She charges a tentative $1 Mn for each sponsored post. 

How Kim Kardashian became a successful Businesswoman

Kim Kardashian became a successful businesswoman due to her existing television show, the publicity and media coverage received from it. Also, due to her celebrity image and personal life which read like an open book, she has been a favourite among gossip blogs, and the paparazzi. This exposure has helped her business success immensely.

Food prepared by home cooks, housewives and stay-at-home mothers is the most valuable and precious asset which money can’t buy. No gourmet restaurant can provide the satisfaction of eating a fresh, home-style meal made by experienced hands. 

Daalchini, the Woman-led Enterprise

Daalchini is a food tech start-up based in the Delhi-NCR region that’s improving access to affordable home cooked food through IoT (Internet of Things) technology. The company sets up food kiosks and provides instant, affordable, healthy home cooked food through IoT enabled phygital (physical + digital) vending machines. Prerna Kalra leads the enterprise and is currently one of India’s emerging women leaders who turned an idea perceived as feminine (home cooked food) into a novel start-up innovation.

Prerna Kalra – Brain behind the company 

Prerna Kalra, the brain behind Daalchini is a former Paytm employee who co-founded the start-up alongside her Paytm colleague Vidya Bhushan. 

Her womanpreneur story

Prerna Kalra’s womanpreneur story stemmed from a brief work visit to China where she found the answer to her constant struggle with accessing fresh home cooked meals amidst a busy schedule every day. The answer was found in vending machines that could dispense fresh food items. She leveraged the huge tiffin services sector in India after thorough research into the market for home cooked food. 

Business acumen

Prerna’s keen eye quickly observed that despite the home tiffin market comprising over 3500 services providers back in 2017, access to home food was still difficult for consumers. Through Daalchini, she quickly tapped into the demand for strong tiffin and home food services. She also identified several gaps in the market like the shortfall of the logistics infrastructure which she fulfilled through her start-up Daalchini. 

Prerna’s Vision for Home-Cooked Meals in Food Tech

Prerna’s vision for home-cooked meals in food tech was to make healthy and affordable home food instantly available to consumers. The company’s fleet of smart vending machines that make this possible became operational in business settings such as offices, hospitals, and hotels. 

How she led the vending machine concept for home-style meals

Prerna led the company into a vending machine concept for home-style meals by bringing together a team of home chefs who started working at 3 am every day to prepare daily fresh food using prescribed recipes and ingredients. Food safety compliance norms are met with and monitored to ensure that the food is consumable, healthy, and safe to be vended out of the Daalchini kiosks. 

The pandemic has been a watershed year for Indian businesses. The preventive measures to contain the virus are creating ripples of disruption in businesses, mushrooming new workforce models like remote and hybrid. As Indian businesses gradually embrace the remote work culture, the dependence on technology will increase and so will be the change in technology needs. 

According to the Work Trend Index survey, 73 percent of workers want flexible remote work options and 67 percent want technologies that provide more in-person collaboration post-pandemic. Also, technology adoption in SME businesses being new, the priority on cybersecurity has been less that has made these businesses vulnerable to cyberattackers. Therefore, businesses are now seeking technologies that are easy to use, can seamlessly work on other devices, are easy to collaborate, share, and at the same time secure the data.

To cater to the changing technology demands of companies in a dynamic business environment Microsoft has developed Windows 365 a cloud service that allows businesses and employees to experience Windows 10 or 11 in a new manner.

What is the new product Windows 365? 

To enable businesses and employees to work from a remote location without interruptions, Microsoft has launched Windows 365 that takes the operating system to the Microsoft Cloud. Users using it can securely stream all apps, data, and settings from personal or corporate devices. This feature is appropriate right from the interns to contractors to software developers and industrial designers. 

In a fiercely competitive business environment, new startups are jostling to own the maximum share in reach and profit pie. We live in a digitally induced lifestyle, surrounded by abundant information and ideas that can be overwhelming at times. It is a risk for the startups and businesses to get lost in the clutter and might even get erased from people’s recall. The distinctiveness is lost in the process, which is why the personal branding of entrepreneurs is imperative.

The road to entrepreneurship is a bumpy one. When an entrepreneur comes out of its cocoon to do something disruptive they undergo several barriers and hardships. These hardships further shape the entrepreneur’s personality and journey to add distinctiveness to it. Many Indian entrepreneurs perceive personal branding to be an advertisement for themselves that might not give the business limelight whereas, effective personal branding can drive tractions to business and generate leads.

Personal branding helps an individual communicate their unique story and draws attention to what matters. It strengthens the trust between business, colleagues, and clients alike while boosting the reputation of the business founder and fostering successful relationships- both personally and professionally.

The art of personal branding is well showcased by Shailja Dutt, founder of Weryz, a personal branding solutions app, helping individuals to deep dive into the brand ‘You’.

Shailja Dutt – her journey of entrepreneurship

Shailja Dutt, an economic honours graduate from Lady Shri Ram College, holds an MBA from International Management Institute. Weryz is not Shailja’s first entrepreneurial attempt. She first stepped into the entrepreneurial shoes two decades ago by establishing Stellar Search-a leadership advisory firm specializing in senior talent acquisition in emerging markets across the globe. It provides services in Leadership Assessment, Executive Coaching, Employer Brand Consulting with its presence in India, South East Asia, and Africa. 

The founder feels that the important aspect of an individual choosing a career path or beginning a business should be finding the ‘Why’ and position themselves as thought leaders. The answer to Why is what most aspiring entrepreneurs do not have an answer to. To enable individuals to showcase their unique journeys and answer the ‘Why’ effectively led Shailja Dutt to set up personal branding firm Weryz in October 2020.  

The MSME sector is now reliant and expectant of government initiatives that will rescue them from the throes of despair. Help from the government is the only way the sector can revive. The state of Telangana has been proactive in launching several initiatives for start-ups and MSMEs. MSME Prerna is one such newly launched event that will empower entrepreneurs in the MSME sector.

What is MSME Prerna?

MSME Prerna is a Business Mentoring Program recently launched by Indian Bank which is the first of its kind by the banking company. It’s an initiative aimed at empowering MSMEs (micro, small and medium sized enterprises ) by enabling them to drive greater business efficiency, optimise value and capacity. It offers training through a series of virtual programs to imbue a sense of confidence into budding or aspiring entrepreneurs.

Everything you need to know about MSME Prerna

The programme was launched in the State of Telangana in the Telugu language but caters to entrepreneurs across different Indian states. Launched in partnership with Poornatha & Co., a Business Management Consultant from Tamil Nadu, MSME Prerna is a web-based training programme that will communicate with users in simple, jargon-free terminologies. 10 virtual programmes have already concluded in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry and Uttarakhand. There are plans for phased, pan India programmes to reach maximum entrepreneurs who can benefit from the sessions.

Beneficiaries of the programme

The main beneficiaries of the MSME Prerna programme are budding entrepreneurs in the state of Telangana but will eventually cater to entrepreneurs across various states. The programme is specially interested in aiding women entrepreneurs in the country as well as entrepreneurs who are well versed in their local languages and dialects.

Benefits for MSMEs

MSMEs will develop managerial and financial capabilities through the programme. MSME Prerna will also generate awareness regarding initiatives by national and state governments and agencies for MSMEs. The parent organisation of the programme Indian Bank, is an MSME friendly institution that has provided financial support to 20 lakh MSMEs and provided credit exposure worth more than INR 70180 Cr. The Telangana State Finance Corporation (TSFC) will collaborate with Indian Bank to develop innovative mechanisms that will help MSMEs.

According to a study by FinancesOnline, 57 percent of the companies believe that efficiency in supply chain management enables them to further develop their business. For any business, the supply chain process entails integrating planning and executing a product’s flow right from the procurement of raw materials, its production, inventory management and its distribution to the end customer.

For any SME business in India, the major hurdle faced in the supply chain process is the procurement stage, where a significant time is spent processing orders, additional paperwork, and communicating with suppliers that tends to bring down the operational efficiency. The answer to this challenge is the digitisation of the procurement, provided by Moglix, a B2B e-commerce marketplace for industrial goods that has recently gained unicorn status.  

What is Moglix?

 Moglix is disrupting the procurement process by digitising it for 5,00,000 SME businesses in India. Aspiring to be an Indian Alibaba, Moglix is an e-commerce B2B marketplace that facilitates the procurement of industrial essentials in safety, electricals, lighting, cleaning and housekeeping, office stationery, power tools, and MRO (maintenance, repair, and operations). In addition to industrial supplies, it also offers an end-to-end procurement solution including resource planning and financing.

A few years ago, banks guarded their data with utmost security and privacy. In fact, they were more reluctant to share customer and financial data than they were about parting with their money. But with the growth of fintech start-ups, banks are now realising that to stick to rigorous banking methods is to become irrelevant. They are now much more flexible and ready to share data through APIs for fintech start-ups and are thus siding with the competition. As a result, both the banking as well as the fintech sector are growing together and have become mutually beneficial to each other.

What is open banking?

Open Banking is an initiative which is fostering innovation in the fintech sector. It transforms the banking sector into a more inclusive and convenient medium for users. Besides financial inclusion, it is pivotal in driving innovation in the banking industry. Open banking cuts the dependency on legacy infrastructure among banks. It’s the bridge that’s culminating in more partnerships and collaborations between traditional banks and the fintech sector, thus encouraging innovation in fintech and leading to higher fintech adoptions among consumers.

How open banking is driving SME success in Fintech

The fintech sector is riddled with disruptive players especially among start-ups and SMEs. These fintech players are collaborating with banks and leveraging APIs to create digital solutions that are democratising financial services. This has been possible only because of the prevalence of the open banking system.

How MSMEs in Fintech are benefitting

Open Credit

India has high demand for credit and in this regard the Open Credit and Open Credit Enablement Network (OCEN) have emerged to democratise credit for the vulnerable segments like MSMEs and small businesses. By providing credit access to the severely underpenetrated MSME sector, OCEN is a valuable technology framework that’s giving rise to the open data economy. On the other hand, it nurtures multiple service providers including technology companies in fintech to extend credit services through innovative solutions.

Funded by data

Through open banking, banks are making valuable data available via APIs. This is funding small and mid-size enterprises (SMEs) with a more valuable asset than hard capital ‘data’, which is driving fintech success. The data they harvest is endowing SMEs with real value. Data sharing implementations like the AA (Account Aggregators) architecture and the DEPA (Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture) are helping lenders in fintech to lend money to individuals and small businesses both in the fintech and non-fintech space within minutes. With data flowing freely, subsectors in fintech are thriving with new players venturing into sub-sectors like lending, wealth management, personal finance management, accounting, etc.

India’s Open Banking Ecosystem and UPI

India’s Open Banking system is based on a hybrid model comprising IndiaStack, a Government API initiative and software platform for businesses, start-ups and developers. UPI (Unified Payments Interface) is a subset of IndiaStack that’s a classic example of the introduction of open banking in the country.