India Accelerator Nation’s First Accelerator Programme for MSMEs

With the intent to support MSMEs with adequate professional input, training on resilience and funds, leading business accelerator firm India Accelerator (IA) has launched India’s first MSME Accelerator programme. As part of the initiative, IA management has decided to select 100 potential MSMEs under this programme across the nation in various sectors in the first year.

The announcement of IA comes at a time when the MSME sector is facing an existential crisis in the Pandemic and this sector is plagued with issues such as high cost of capital, low sales, disrupted supply chains etc.

Elaborating on the need of the programme, Mr Ratish Pandey, Lead-IA MSME Accelerator, said: “With this program, we impart the basics needed to set up a  business for success. We tool the budding entrepreneurs to put their best foot forward.  The program based on practical step-by-step business strategies has been successful and proven to work by tens of thousands businesses all around the world. Young entrepreneurs, with a mix of classroom sessions and practical workshops, are empowered with ideas that they can straight away implement in their business, see a positive return on their investment before the program ends.”

While on one hand the selected MSMEs will undergo the accelerator programme for growing their businesses, they will also get access to bankers and financiers to address their requirements. Besides, the MSMEs can take advantage of IA’s startup ecosystem enriched with young and technically competent talent.

Mr. Deepak Sharma, Chief Agility Officer at IA, stated: “The Accelerator programme is going to happen in a phased manner. We are focusing on MSMEs around Delhi-NCR in the first phase. We are in constant touch with various industry associations in this region to make this ambitious project successful.”

India Accelerator has accelerated close to 60 companies so far and aims to leverage its startup ecosystem to benefit the MSMEs.

The program also aims to merge India’s rapidly growing startup ecosystem with the MSME Sector to leverage ‘Technology and Innovation’ of the Startups and the ‘experience and knowledge’  of MSMEs.

“Depending upon the success of the project, we will further expand this programme. We have set a target of enriching at least 500 MSMEs in another 3 years with our expertise and ecosystem to begin with,” further said Mr. Pandey, who was earlier General Manager, India, Middle East & Africa at Bose Corporation.

India Accelerator has roped in seasoned technologists and entrepreneurs as coaches for the participating MSMEs.

The structure of the programme contains topics such as Change Management & Mindset Transformation, Growing Sales through Innovation and Digital Marketing, Financial Modeling and Fundraising, Digital Transformation & ERP Management and Supply Chain and Distribution Management.

For the benefit of readers, ‘Accelerators’ are typically intense rapid programs targeting growth-stage startups to help accelerate the life cycle of young innovative companies, modeled on a similar concept, this program aims to help MSMEs boost Sales, inculcate innovation and expand globally.

The programme comprises a module of eight hours each spanning over two weeks on weekends.