The Hindu Business Line : A helping hand

We're looking at the concept of `fortune at the bottom of the pyramid', and are seen as a trusted partner of the SMEs. — Ram Venuprasad, Adviser (Enterprise), Commonwealth Secretariat.

A participant from New Zealand at the Rural Technology Centre, Kuthambakkam village, where a self-help group makes oil cakes.

In a bid to create sustainable and gainful employment, aid resource utilisation and reach technological inputs to small and medium enterprises (SMEs), the London-based Commonwealth Secretariat conducted the second Commonwealth-India small business competitiveness development programme in Chennai last week.. An important achievement of this conference was to mainstream gender participation in economic activity, "and I'll not be exaggerating when I say that at most sessions the women entrepreneurs made the maximum impact by their presentations," says Ram Venuprasad, Adviser (Enterprise), Commonwealth Secretariat (CS).

He gives the example of Isobelle Gidley, "a fantastic and very passionate woman from Vanuatu in the south pacific, a country of two lakh people with 120 languages. She fought against all odds to ensure a sustainable economic employment for the indigenous people of her country in exporting copra and other activities. We've been working with her and she is a good example of how concerned and feisty people within a community can make a big difference."

Ram Venuprasad, Adviser (Enterprise), Commonwealth Secretariat

Funded by the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Co-operation, the development arm of the CS that was established in the 1970s, the CS' primary objective is to reach the ICT (Information, communication, technology) component to SMEs. "We're looking at the concept of `fortune at the bottom of the pyramid', and are seen as a trusted partner of the SMEs."

The CS has 53 members that include the developed, developing and less-developed countries and the funding comes from member subscriptions. From being a beneficiary in the 1970s and 1980s, India has now become a valuable partner that provides assistance to other members, particularly on the IT front in SMEs that "constantly face development problems in their efforts to harness the vast potential and opportunities arising from globalisation and technology upgrades," says Venuprasad.

Apart from technical assistance and intervention at the policy level with member countries, the CS also develops business strategies for different sectors or groups and institutional capacity building.

He cites an example where the CS has "acted as a trusted partner and an honest broker and gone beyond our mandate." This was in Malta, a small country of four lakh population in the Mediterranean, strategically located between Europe and North Africa. It had a protected business, particularly in manufacturing, but when it decided to join the EU, the CS was asked by the country to provide help to make its manufacturing sector more competitive. Through intervention and adopting a process of "network brokerage", the CS brought together disparate and fragmented small businesses in the furniture sector two years ago.

"They were really small enterprises, employing 2, 5 or 7 people; they had extremely talented artisans making beds, cabinets, etc out of wood... very much Italian kind of furniture, but either due to lack of technology or marketing capability and resources, they were not getting anywhere beyond selling a few items in the local market. They needed a lift and we told them that once they got into the EU, they'd need to combine their capabilities," says Venuprasad.

So the CS brought together about 25 small businesses of different furniture makers. Initially they were reluctant but later discovered the strength of working together, particularly when they found that some of them had 80 per cent idle capacity in their machinery and combining this capacity as well as expertise helped them get more orders. "Within 18 months the group evolved and established a consortium in Libya, which was the first overseas manufacturing joint venture by a Maltese company there. It's a big market that we helped them identify and where they couldn't have gone as small companies," he adds.

The CS gets its mandate biennially when the Commonwealth heads of Governments (Chogm) meet; at the last Chogm meet in 2003, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, then the leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, had chaired a high-level review group, which also looked at the issue of sustainable development of small enterprises. At present, the CS has partnered with Indian institutions like the National Small Industries Corporation and Ex-Im Bank for creating awareness and building capacity on development issues in what is called the South-South dialogue.

The five-day Chennai conference — the first was held in Delhi in November 2004 — discussed the problems and bottlenecks that SMEs face, issues of rural connectivity and application of IT to put the growth of small enterprises on the fast track. The discussion sessions were followed by visits to successful enterprises.

Both the sessions as well as the field visits reiterated the important role women are playing in small enterprises. The Chennai-based Inca Hammocks, which the group visited, is the largest hammock manufacturer in the east and employs only women.

"It was a fantastic experience; our gender adviser and a businessman from Fiji accompanied us. The latter said, `I supply hammocks to all the tourism resorts in the Pacific, so let's talk'. He also said that for the hammocks that have a wood component, they could import mahogany from Fiji. So this kind of tangible benefit and network is happening at the enterprise-to-enterprise level," he adds.

The Chennai meet also had officials from Sri Lanka and Pakistan who looked to the CS to help technology transfer in developing their agro and rural-based industries. They would have certainly watched with interest the presentation of Ilango, the panchayat President from Kuthambakkam village in Tamil Nadu, "an extremely articulate man, who speaks in English, has brought together a network of six villages and is a classic example of optimum use of agro and rural resources to improve the village economy," says Venuprasad.

Sri Lanka has also requested the CS to help its small businesses that were hit by the tsunami waves. The CS also works with fishermen, particularly in the area of improving sanitary standards for marine products to meet stringent export norms.

But the most heartening aspect of the Chennai meet was the gender component; the women entrepreneurs of Andhra Pradesh were adequately represented here. "They are pioneers in India and very active in networking and training women entrepreneurs."

He gives all credit to the former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu for encouraging women entrepreneurs. "He has done phenomenal work in mainstreaming the gender issue and a lot of people in the developing world look up to him for what he has managed to do in Hyderabad."

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