HiEERA Programme

Empretec India Foundation (EIF), launched its flagship Programmes HiEERA (High Impact Entrepreneurs from Emerging Regions of Action) and DRIVE (Development through Re-Purposing Indian Village Enterprises) to promote innovative and internationally competitive, sustainable small and medium enterprises in India and other forward-looking countries.

The HiEERA programme has been developed to cater to the needs of high-impact (both high-potential and high-performance) entrepreneurs who are looking to scale up and integrate their enterprises into local, regional, national, and global industry value chains. The programme includes both culture and linkage-based interventions.

Culture Inputs are designed to provide insights to entrepreneurs with growth mindsets—those capable of initiating, strengthening, deepening, and extending industry value chains—urging them to identify and import the behaviours from Empretec's competency framework into their personal and business situations through a process of deliberate habit-formation, encouraged through a range of coaching input.

Linkage Inputs include access to markets, technology, and finance, which are delivered using a catalogue of Business Development Services (BDS) involving a top-down approach, starting with interventions with the first few tiers of supply and distribution networks of larger and more developed enterprises and working our way down to smaller enterprises with potential for value chain integration. Specialized BDS may include developing business plans, valuation reports, helping meet governance and environmental standards, etc., for the curated list of HiEERAs based on the demand for such services.

Culture Inputs for the HiEERA programme help EIF identify aspiring, early-stage, and settled entrepreneurs and stakeholders with growth mindsets, who are then introduced to a series of interventions and activities designed to lead entrepreneurs and stakeholders towards a direct understanding of how business behaviours may shape business outcomes.

Key Benefits

• Inspires entrepreneurs to start, grow and develop their businesses.
• For governments: generates employment, strengthens base of the national economy, improve quality of life.
• Lending institutions: lender-client relationships become more reliable, stable, and profitable.
• Transnational companies: better quality of suppliers, lower transaction costs.
• SMEs: improves productivity and efficiency, and increases domestic and cross-border business linkages.

Empretec brings together actors of entrepreneurship-development onto a common platform, nationally, regionally and globally.

Benefits have been delivered in 34 countries over 23 years.

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