State to equip 5,000 youth with entrepreneurial skills

The free training programme will accommodate students from recognized institutions, aspiring to become entrepreneurs. On completion of the training program, they will be given assistance to plan their business and will be helped to tie up with financial institutions for a term loan to set up manufacturing or service enterprises. The project cost of the term loan should not exceed Rs 1 crore and capital subsidy of 25 per cent of project cost should not exceed Rs 25 lakhs with 3 per cent interest subvention to be provided by the state government.

The trainees will be exposed to behavioural components, given business opportunity guidance, provided information on entrepreneurship-support institutions, business laws and regulations related to micro and small enterprises, management issues and given technical training in the specific technology sector.

A senior official from the training division said that an innovative methodology–combining behavioural and management games, lecture cum discussion supported by audio-visuals, interaction with successful entrepreneurs, intensive technical training and exposure visits–will be adopted.According to the official, the duration of the training programme will be for one month which will include two weeks of theoretical training, one week of market survey and one week of preparation for project report.

The training will be more interactive in nature and therefore, the batch size will be confined to 25. A total of 5,000 entrepreneurs are proposed to be trained at an average of 40 batches comprising 25 trainees each. “Priority will be given to projects which are eco-friendly, accord importance to energy conservation and are export oriented”, the official said adding the first batch is expected to start in the middle of this month.