Kerala   

Promoting green technologies

Suneel Parasnis

KOCHI: New trends in global economy have brought hope to a variety of sectors even while sounding the death knell of many other enterprises. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have been facing tremendous challenges in the new situation. They need proper guidance and help to explore the opportunities and tide over the crisis.

New Ventures India, an agency supported by USAID; World Research Institute, Washington; and the Confederation of Indian Industry, is engaged in extending help to them.

Suneel Parasnis, country managed of New Ventures India, explains the initiatives. Having spent several years in the U.S. as a government functionary, he understands the struggles that new enterprises encounter. He is on a mission to find the sort of help that brilliant ventures need. The focus is on environment-friendly technologies and sustainable development.

His organisation is not just a funding agency, but a novel support system that extends help in identifying the technologies, networking with successful businesses, offering aid extended by various groups and finding new markets. He has a reason to take up the cause of SMEs. “They contribute about 60 per cent of GDP growth,” he says. Helping them would mean economic, social and environmental benefits to a cross section of society in a country where half the population is below poverty line. “The way to the heart and brain is from the stomach,” he says. As a business accelerator, New Ventures equips small business leaders with the skills needed to succeed in today’s markets. It provides management training, business advisory services, professional mentoring and access to capital and markets.

Sustainable enterprises operating in sectors such as clean technologies, advance technologies for water management, agriculture/organic products, ecotourism, energy efficiency/renewable energy, green building materials could benefit from the initiative. The agency will select those companies that deliver innovative, environmental benefits and are financially viable.

The selected companies will receive mentoring services to improve the business. “Natural capital, human capital and physical capital have to match,” he notes.

New Ventures India releases an annual call for business plans for environmentally-focussed SMEs in target sectors seeking investment from Rs.50 lakh to Rs.15 crore.

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