SMEToolkit@India…God sent gift for Indian startup entrepreneurs
The SME Toolkit is a invaluable resource for Indian startup entrepreneurs that I could have killed for three years ago (when I made the switch to being self employed). It is a project of IFC (part of the World Bank) and IBM. In India, ICICI Bank has tied up with IFC to offer business management & entrepreneurship related info to small & medium enterprises. This is a website that contains tons of resources to help entrepreneurs & business owners start, finance, formalize and grow their businesses- this ranges from info about accounting/finance, business planning, marketing/sales, operations to how-to articles, business forms, excel based templates et al. The diversity of the website’s content is quite amazing. Check out the business forms section - it contains scores of forms & templates (in doc/excel formats) that you can download, adapt or modify for your use. Ot its Tools section, which has various financial tools for business analysis.
I can vouch from my personal experience that such a resource can greatly lower the entry barriers to starting up on your own. When you doing initial planning for your business, you need easy access to info that can help you make important decisions about your future venture. Of course, once you decide to go ahead with it, you need to hire chartered accountants, lawyers, office managers etc but before you get to that stage, you need extraneous help to take decisions. This is all the more important for technology entrepreneurs, since they (usually) are techies (having little exposure to business planning, finance, legal frameworks etc) and they are probably fed on a diet of the ‘do-it-yourself’ culture.
Another great resource (covered previously on this blog) that first time entrepreneurs should check out is the website of NEN (National Entrepreneurship Network).
Ashish Tulsian on Oct 18, 2007
hey amit,
this is really a great piece of information and rightly said “god sent gift for indian startup entrepreneurs”
had a look at the toolkit just now….looks really helpful !!
thanx a lott
sandeep on Oct 19, 2007
hi amit,
this is a good resource and i feel it is helpful for entrepreneurs. but what i really feel India is lacking is the ‘Hand Holders’ - the Angels (not necessarily financial investors only) who can back and guide a budding entrepreneur . these are the people who make the real difference to a potential entrepreneur.
Ram on Oct 26, 2007
I like the way you write. It’s a good blog. I reviewed this kit many weeks ago. It’s useful, no doubt. But, you will still need the help of CAs to start the company in India. If it’s just a one man show, it doesn’t matter. But, if someone starts a pvt ltd., it’s hard to navigate without the help of CA. It’s especially true, if the founders lived outside India before starting a venture in India.
binny on Nov 15, 2007
I got a lot of help from this website for starting my own venture http://www.flipkart.com .
It has all the legal and financial info that you need when starting up.
Kudos to ICICI.