Biz Buddy: Tamil Nadu's faceless grievance redress mechanism for industries

Representatives of an automotive firm had been trying to get two issues cleared by government departments in two states for a few months, with little success. Then they explored Biz Buddy, a faceless grievance redress mechanism of Tamil Nadu's Guidance Bureau for industries, and their issue was resolved in about five weeks.

So, what is this mechanism and how does it work?

It is completely digital and similar to the grievance redress system for citizens, except that this portal is meant to address issues faced by industries.

A first of its kind in India, Tamil Nadu's Biz Buddy is an industry helpdesk that facilitates monitoring and time-bound resolution of issues, according to Neeraj Mittal, managing director and chief executive of Guidance Tamil Nadu, the state government’s nodal agency for investment promotion and single-window facilitation.

This is one of the Tamil Nadu government’s recent initiatives to improve ease of doing business through effective pre-operation and after-care services.

"We want to resolve grievances in 30 working days," claims Mittal. But what has been the strike rate? At least 80 per cent of the cases were closed successfully within this window. Investors' issues which were pending for nearly 180 days were resolved in 24 days after the same issues came through Biz Buddy, says Mittal, adding that the portal helped improve accountability and transparency in the system for existing and potential investors.

So far, 15 departments, 48 agencies and 103 officers have been on-boarded to Biz Buddy. From law & order to infrastructure, water, lifting of garbage, labour, connectivity, and pending approvals (non-legal), this portal is helping in all the running issues of industries.

These departments deal with 95-98 per cent of the issues faced by industries. Going forward, the portal wants to drive more public adoption, add new departments, and integrate with a new single-window portal for proactive intervention based on trends. The state government aims to add nearly 200 services to Biz Buddy.

Vaibhav Mittal, business head, Mahindra World City, a leading commercial and township property that houses hundreds of small, medium and big industries, says one of the most important aspects of Biz Buddy is that it is completely faceless.

Earlier, there was no way to reach different departments, but today it is possible in just one click while sitting in office. "No state government has got this kind of a tool; it's truly one of its kind," says Mittal, adding that it is important for every state to look at ease of doing business, not only at the time of starting the business but also in the course of running it. Biz Buddy addresses the second part.

As the portal is at a nascent stage still, it doesn't yet have integration with some of the latest technology. But as the numbers increase, the state government would look to use Big Data and other technologies for analysis and more efficient and smoother transactions.

The features of Biz Buddy today rely on simple but sophisticated systems, including tracking and monitoring of investor issues in real time, automatic SMS/email notifications triggered on submission, assignment, status change, etc. Also, help calls are automatically escalated to a higher level if they are not resolved within a predefined period. Investors can track their help calls online at any time. The ‘help call tracker’ allows investors to raise and answer queries.

Dynamic dashboards for officers at different hierarchical levels consolidate help call reports sent to officials concerned on a weekly basis.