In a bid to keep themselves abreast with global trends, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Rajkot are set to take corporate lessons from the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
CII will be offering a program called 'Connect' under which chief executive officers, managing directors and other top officials of leading companies will talk about corporate world to the SMEs of Rajkot. Under the programme, CII will be organising bimonthly lectures for the SMEs.
"Rajkot is well known as an engineering hub, comprising over 98 per cent MSMEs. Such a programme is required to provide insights into best practices implemented by the large corporates and thereby enabling local industries to understand and adopt at least few recommendations as suggested by experts. This way, the SMEs can develop on continuous inputs and develop and grow as per current global trends," said Jayesh Parekh, CII Rajkot Executive.
In the lecture series 'Connect' eminent business leaders, CEOs, consultants, advisors are invited to share lessons of excellence, interact with industry members on diverse topics and give their views on the corporate world.
The series will provide a forum for leading CEOs to share their priorities and insights before industry members.
"It aims to benefit industry members from hearing CEOs' perspectives as well as interacting with them and exploring synergy of interests to find avenues for personal or corporate growth, sharing business opportunities, identifying potential collaborations, exchanging thoughts, ideas and concepts, in turn, CEOs have the opportunity to strengthen their relationship with industry representatives," said Parekh.
Initially CII will invite local industry leaders who grew into large players from being a small scale unit. As per the general format of the initiative, an eminent business leader or speaker shall deliberate on any chosen topic and invite questions from the audience.
"Rajkot has more than 5,000 small scale units which are mainly connected with automobile, machine tools, foundry, and engineering. Overall growth of industry is about 20-25 per cent but the biggest drawback of Rajkot industry is lack of marketing and management knowledge. They need to be educate about it," said Azaz Motiwala, certified m Consultants.