Persistent’s Deshpande sets out to create 25,000 small entrepreneurs

With job creation one of the biggest problems faced by India today, and not having a stable monthly income a challenge faced by innumerable families, Anand Deshpande, founder of Pune-based Persistent Systems, has set out on a road to convert some job seekers into job creators.

July saw the incorporation of deAsra Foundation, a section 8, not-for-profit company, promoted by Deshpande, his wife Sonali and their two children. It’s brief: to help create 25,000 small businesses mainly in the services sector, which in turn would create one lakh jobs, over the next five years.

“If you look at demographics, 53 per cent of India’s population is below 25 years of age and there are 25 million people at every age,” Deshpande says, pointing out that this called for one million jobs a month.

“There is no way you can just create so many jobs, so we wanted to make some of these job seekers into job creators,” he explains. deAsra’s target group would be educated youth, and the businesses he would like to foster are everyday services such as tailoring, baking, wedding photography, dairy and spice making.

“The service industry in India is both highly unorganised and inefficient, and offers the largest potential for small companies,” Deshpande says, explaining that deAsra will prepare pre-designed ‘’Business-in-a-Box’ modules for 250 such business ideas that can also be viewed online on the foundation’s portal.

The pre-designed template is a six-step ready-reckoner for aspiring small entrepreneurs that will guide them from preparing a business plan, getting the documentation in order, getting funding (deAsra has tied-up with 8 banks), buying the necessary equipment, marketing products and finally run a successful business.

To boot, each type of business would have an Udyog Mitra, a go-to expert trouble shooter who would be hired by the foundation to mentor the fledgling entrepreneur and provide specific rather than generic advice. As of now, deAsra has prepared templates for 60 businesses, helped set-up 20 with 600-odd in the pipeline, and already has 20 Udyog Mitras on board.

Typically, the businesses on deAsra’s radar would need investment ranging from ₹1-25 lakh, employ 2-10 people and generate a monthly income of ₹30,000-50,000 for every individual.

The aim is to groom 100 self-employed people in each of these 250 businesses, says Deshpande, adding that they don’t plan to have anything so esoteric that can’t achieve this critical mass. “Our sweet spot will be if (budding entrepreneurs) pick one of the templates,” he says. deAsra has also employed Persistent to build deAzzle an app that will help manage the technology for these small businesses off a smart phone. “This will help get appointments, collect orders, get payments and so on,” he explains adding that the product will be launched in the next few months.

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