WASME : Small Cyber Enterprises : Business & Development for Sustainability

Cyber enterprises have been playing a major role in fuelling Internet development in India. Owning a computer is a luxury for majority of world's population. But thanks to cyber enterprises, Internet browsing and other such services are accessible to people across at affordable prices. Today, it is the services sector – under which cyber enterprise comes in – that provides the maximum number of jobs. In the early 1990s, the manufacturing sector contributed a 96% share in the total number of enterprises, where as it came down to 66% in 2002, as per the third All India Census of Small Scale Industries by the Ministry of Small Scale Industries. Moreover, Information & Communications Technology (ICT) segment is one the fastest growing sector.

Apart from helping the world become a smaller place, ICT and cyber enterprises can have a positive influence on our economic and social life. For instance cyber enterprises can be a partner to small-scale private sector improve their performance and efficiency. For instance ICT help make the enterprises more efficient and enable them to survive in the competitive market with improved business process efficiency, better productivity, reduced operational costs. It would also facilitate better ways of creating and delivering products and services on a global scale.

Emergence of cyber entreprises in villages helps many villages/ villagers get access to ICT services. Opportunities are vast in today's widely networked world for cross border trade in services, for instance, as the business process outsourcing boom proved. With increasing broadband penetration, cyber enterprises cannot survive by themselves on the businesses that they get from surfers living nearby or other services that they offer, like photocopying and etc. With broadband penetration rate going up day by day their customer base would decline, if not yet. Business development for new technology enterprises is the real challenge in this era and new avenues and tapping new areas would open up job opportunities for thousands of people. The use of ICTs to move outsourcing jobs to rural areas is another opportunity. The question is how cyber entrepreneurs could be helped out in taking up outsourcing jobs or expanding their business. Cyber enterprise based in rural areas can undertake j obs such as data entry, scanning, data conversion tasks and billing services etc.

In this context, WASME, is organizing a seminar on Small Cyber Enterprises: Business & Market Development for Sustainability, on 20 July, 2007, WASME House, Noida Sector 16 A, Noida, UP. The present workshop is a prelude to a series of workshop on ICT enterprises which would culminate in the larger CYBER ENTERPRISE SUMMIT at a later date by WASME.

The Seminar would discuss and review economic opportunities coming out of Information & Communications Technology (ICT) and the role of NGOs in developing IT/ICT entrepreneurship. The seminar would deliberate upon outsourcing potential for cyber entrepreneurs in rural areas and would also touch upon possibilities and trends like feasibility of Business Process Outsourcing (BPOs) in rural areas. How cyber entrepreneurs could take advantage of outsourcing market for further job creation would be the major issue that would be deliberated.

Date : 20 July, 2007

Venue : WASME House,
            Noida Sector 16 A,
            Noida,
            Uttar Pradesh

Regards,
Kumar Thirumal