Spark Minda, Ashok Minda Group and Yes Bank have launched the ‘Scale-Up’ series, an industry-academia collaboration, to upskill MSMEs from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities in India with MDI (Management Development Institute) Gurgaon as the training partner.

The initiative is aimed at growing MSME businesses by educating them on the latest manufacturing technologies, global best practices and innovative finance management.

The maiden chapter of the series was initiated in MDI Gurgaon, in collaboration with the first corporate anchor Spark Minda. The curriculum of the pilot workshop has been jointly designed by MDI, Spark Minda Supply Chain Heads and Yes Bank’s MSME subject matter experts. Spanning two days, the residential training program was attended by top 50 promoter-level MSME suppliers of Spark Minda, Ashok Minda Group on May 31 and June 1, 2018.

Yes Bank states this is the first of the series of similar workshops planned in partnership with different Corporate Anchors across industries during the year.

Ashok Minda, group CEO, Spark Minda said, “The Indian automotive sector is amidst the era of evolution where the next phase of growth lays on world-class skilling, financial best practices, time and resource management. The industry till date has been focused on manufacturing, supplying, warehousing and logistics; imparting the precise skill sets and boosting MSME business amongst the supplier is prudent for the industry as well as for our group. We have collaborated with Yes Bank and MDI, Gurgaon for training/skilling our 50 suppliers. This joint initiative will impart expertise which is important for the sector at the given hour; such associations are meant to be taken leaps and bounds.”

Rana Kapoor, managing director and CEO, Yes Bank said, “India’s MSMEs have played a key role in its economic development, accounting for almost 45 percent of industrial output and over 8 percent of GDP. Yes Bank is committed to being a one-stop solution provider for the MSME sector by not only catering to all their banking requirements but also providing scale-up trainings through such unique collaboration to promote operational efficiency, digitisation and a robust environmental and occupational health and safety performance, thus handholding them to becoming globally competitive.”

Dr Himadri Das, director, MDI Gurgaon said, “As a pioneer in Management Development Programs in India, MDI Gurgaon is pleased to partner with Yes Bank for this unique MSME initiative. This is a classic example of industry-academia partnership where MDI Gurgaon and Yes Bank together are providing MSMEs with critical complementary inputs of knowledge capital and financial capital, respectively. The financial capital provided by Yes Bank through their lines of credit will be most effectively put to good use by the MSMEs with the knowledge capital provided by MDI Gurgaon through their training programs. These complementary set of inputs will fuel the growth of MSMEs, which are an extremely important component of the Indian economy.”