N S Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB), set up to encourage entrepreneurs to act on their ideas, is all set to expand its horizons by making an overseas foray.
The centre is launching its business growth programme (BGP), a short-term management course for owner-managers of family-run small and medium enterprises, in Singapore in association with Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, NSRCEL chairperson S Sundararajan said.
The centre, which conducted the programme first in Bangalore and Hyderabad a few years ago had suspended it due to a lack of interest among companies. "As a precursor to IIMB's foray into Singapore, we now plan to organise the programme for family-owned businesses there," he said.
Sundararajan told Business Standard, the programme is aimed at imparting modern management education to family-run enterprises which usually lack vision and a proper business strategy to compete with global companies.
Only eight non-competing companies will be selected to participate in the programme that runs for nine weeks.
The programme will be launched in March 2006 after final approval from the IIMB advisory committee, he said.
He said: "There are a huge number of family-owned SMEs in Singapore including NRIs that will be invited to participate in a presentation and the interested companies will be chosen by a joint committee of NSRCEL and BVB."
The faculty members of the programme will be Sunderarajan and S Raghunath, professor of corporate strategy at the IIMB.
The nine week-long programme will include both theory and practical sessions. A one-to-one discussion will be held at the company premises and based on the information garnered, the NSRCEL will prepare an action-cum-business plan for the business.
Venture funds, banks and financial institutions will be invited to attend the final presentation programme at the end of the course. This will help companies secure funds for their future expansion and diversification projects, Sundararajan said.
The advantage of conducting this programme for IIMB is that it will get new case studies for its post graduate students at Bangalore on family-run businesses and also help it launch management courses in Singapore in association with BVB.
"Once the model succeeds, we aim to replicate it in other Asian countries and expand ourselves globally," adds Sundararajan.
NSRCEL will also help these companies sort out various issues like partnership problems, succession issues and managing human resources.
Set up with a Rs 10 crore (Rs 100 million) donated by N S Raghavan, former joint managing director and founder, Infosys Technologies, in association with Global Internet Ventures, NSRCEL runs an incubation centre for nurturing and promoting entrepreneurship at the startup level. Presently, six business ideas are being incubated at the modern 18,000 sq ft centre on the IIMB campus.
