On the job with the sun
The promise of SELCO Incubation support to be very operational begins on each of the incubatee locations spread in - Guwahati, Barpeta, Shillong, Imphal, Khargapur, Lakhikantapur, Cooch Behar, Unnao, Lucknow and Udaipur. Post the week long induction program, each of us at the SELCO Incubation team spread out to get a first hand account of the entrepreneur's region and the challenges associated with it. The objective of the visits were to get the pilot program off the ground. This helped them establish the customer segment, get some feedback about customer expectations on the price, quality, service and start building financial linkages. A series of demonstrations were lined up and helped them boost their confidence on how to handle questions on affordability, technology and financing for solar lights. We had a banker's training at the Mewar Aanchalik Gramin Bank which gave an overview of the experience of Aryavart Gramin Bank, Uttar Pradesh.
The SELCO Incubation Centre held its formal induction of the inaugural batch of incubatee’s spread over a week in Bangalore (October 8 - 12, 2012). The induction phase is the start of the philosophy and knowledge transfer over one year duration to each entrepreneur. The critical portion of the mentoring is to induce the business philosophy which seeks to delicately balance the social needs and also building a financially sustainable business. We sought out to load the group with a packed agenda but realized that the process of this ‘knowledge transfer’ will be gradual and experiential. Hence, we boiled down our primary objective of the week long induction as follows:
Below (L to R) Devakishore Soraisam – Manipur Arindam Dasgupta – Assam Manish Khare – Madhya Pradesh Rustum Sengupta – UP & Rajasthan Above (L to R) Mahinder Pal Singh – Punjab Fazle Illahi – Assam A.L.Suiting - Meghalaya
