The Goan Network
When it comes to employment, the scale of business is not always important. People often complain that generating employment in Goa isn’t easy as the state doesn’t have large-scale industries. This isn’t true as significant employment can be generated in small-scale businesses too, which Goa has in plenty.
This is exactly what rapidly expanding business networking organisation, BNI is aiming at doing in Goa. Executive Director at BNI, Rajkumar Kamat said, “At our recently concluded meeting, I asked our members that if they get Rs 1 crore additional business per person, how many more jobs they will be able to generate. We estimated a number of around 7,000 jobs. This, we hope to achieve in another 5-7 years”
BNI is an international business networking organisation, which has 400 members in Goa. BNI’s members are already established entrepreneurs. Most of them are small-scale businesses. To such entities, BNI provides a platform for referral marketing. Through BNI, these entrepreneurs get to know each other’s capabilities and accordingly refer one another, as and when the requirement arises.
The scale of BNI’s achievement can be gauged from the fact that it started in Goa barely five years ago. And, today it has 400 members. Kamat said that BNI is aiming at expanding its membership base to 1,000 in another five years. Related to BNI, there is another organisation called GEMS (The Goa Entrepreneurs Mentoring Services), which works with budding entrepreneurs. This organisation mentors people who have business ideas and helps them in achieving their vision.
Kamat said, “As of now, we are mentoring 43 people in GEMS, of which 6 have already started their business. By the end of this year, we would have mentored 100 budding entrepreneurs. We think we will mentor around 1,000 people in another 5-7 years and if even 3-4 jobs can be generated per business, we are looking at additional 3,000-4,000 jobs.”
This shows that BNI and GEMS initiatives alone are capable of generating around 10,000 jobs for people in Goa in another 5-7 years. Coming on the backdrop of state’s investment policy, which is aimed at generating 50,000 jobs in Goa in another five years’ time,this is heartening news. But, for this to happen, the state government should not lose sight of these crucial small businesses, which have huge potentialfrom employment generation’s viewpoint.
