Hyderabad, September 02nd, 2023: A power-packed panel of inspiring entrepreneurial thought leaders, Jeevan Senparote, Chief General Manager, SEBI; Manisha Saboo, Central Head Infosys (Hyderabad SEZ); Wg Cdr A Anish (Retd.), Chief Delivery Officer, T-Hub; Venugopal Rao, Chairman, MSME Promotional Council of India; Amar Preet Singh, Founder, Neeman’s; Sanjana Shah, Executive Director, BNI Hyderabad and moderator of the show Aditya Deenadayal, Executive Director, Aalankrita Resort & Convention; shared their valuable insights for small and medium entrepreneurs, at a talk show – ‘Celebrating Entrepreneurship: the joyride of a Roller Coaster’, hosted by BNI at Park Hyatt, today. The talk show was a precursor to the 4th edition of BNI Hyderabad’s prestigious flagship Business Event, Kamadhenu Estates BNI GoNat 2023, to be held on 9th and 10th September, 2023, at HITEX, Hyderabad. BNI (Business Network International), is the world’s largest business referral organization.
BNI GoNat, the biggest MSME event in this part of the country, is an opportunity for aspiring small and medium businesses to scale up their footprint and go national. The two-day event has a Seminar on day one and Expo running concurrently on both days. The past three editions of BNI GoNat were a phenomenal success and this year’s edition is eagerly awaited by the entrepreneurial world.
Speaking on the occasion Jeevan Senparote said, entrepreneurs from SME sector can raise 25 crores in capital, The segment has the benefit of more relaxed compliance and that is one of the key features for SME segment on the BSE SME and NSE SME platforms. Even the filing or the financial reporting is required to be on a half-yearly basis rather than a quarterly basis. Even Corporate governance which is the most feared is not applicable to SME sector. If India has to develop as an economy, it needs to find employment for its youth, and large-scale employment can be possible only through the SME sector. MSME is the backbone for any Industry to grow, the MSME ancillary units support the big industries. The government is refocusing on the SME sector, and this is where we want to recalibrate our regulations, we want people to come and list from this sector on the SME platform. Another platform SEBI offers is called the Innovators growth platform, which is focused mainly on technology-specific who have a VC set up and want to list on the stock exchange. Primarily aimed at innovative entrepreneurs on the stock exchange platform so that they can raise capital in an efficient manner.
Wg Cdr A Anish said, T-HUB changed its ideology saying that we are a service provider now, we now provide service to the startups, earlier we were an incubator, typically an Incubator selects a few startups, they pick up some equity and help them to become successful. We changed the model, saying that we don’t want to do the selection process, we want to be agonistic, we want support any and every startup which wants any kind of support. We started looking at the startups as our clients. We engage with three kinds of startups, the first kind of startup is the ones which work out of the building, at full capacity we will be having 800 to 1000 startups, physically out of the building. The second set up is the startups we run programs for, we run approximately ten programs a year, the aim is to get twenty startups per program and pull up 200 high-quality startups, the admission rate into our program is approximately 3%, for 20 startups we get approximately 800 odd applicants for one batch. The third way of engaging is for any and every startup. On an average, we engage with 30 to 40 startups on a daily basis.
Manisha Saboo said, the strategy or something that every company needs to do essentially is to understand what is the new thing coming on the technology front so that you are ahead of the curve and ahead of the competitors, it gives the competitive edge. The main thing which matters is our ability to convert the problem into an opportunity, an ability to mould your business to be relevant in the scenario.
Amar Preet Singh, said, in one of our European holidays, my brother was carrying at least ten pairs of shoes though we were supposed to travel light. He said there is no one pair of shoes which could be used from the start of the day to the end of the day, I have different formal shoe, separate running shoe, and party shoe, I keep trying for a comfortable shoe, that’s when we started looking for one shoe for all occasions. When we went around to Agra, Chennai, Jullundur, I found the industry using lot of plastic, animal skin, synthetic and that’s not good for environment. We wanted to create something which doesn’t harm the environment. Till today we are the first and only company to make sustainable shoes.
Venugopal Rao said, our emphasis at MSME Promotional Council of India, is to create employment for youth and women at the village level so that we can arrest the migration of people to urban areas, because urban areas too can’t provide employment beyond a point.
BNI hosted this Talk Show as a precursor to the prestigious Kamadhenu Estates BNI GoNat 2023. The esteemed panelists gave perspective through some exciting and insightful thoughts for entrepreneurs to ponder and emulate. Their motivations, initial struggles, the highs and lows, how they navigated through the challenges, the pivotal moments that shaped their tryst with entrepreneurship, all made it very interesting to hear. Anticipating and embracing uncertainties should be a part of the entrepreneurial voyage, turning such adversities into opportunities is a silver lining the entrepreneurs yearn for, says Sanjana Shah.
