Internal Maintenance Contracts - A Best Practice?
-Contributed by Sarath Srinivasan
Recently I visited the facilities of a 'service' retail outlet in a small town in Nagpur. The interesting aspect was that the owner of this enterprise had trained his employees to perform maintenance on the equipment. The innovation from his side was that he had done with by awarding maintenance contracts to individuals within his organisation. So if there were 4-5 machines to be maintained in a shop, each had a maintenance contract which was given to a person working at the shop. This person was then trained to perform the job. By providing a monetary incentive for maintenance in the form of a service contract he was able to ensure that his equipment was taken care of. This would also ensure that preventative maintenance is undertaken on a regular basis. Esepcially if the maintenance contract is on a fixed fee basis, it make so much more sense for the person to maintain the equipment and ensure no failures rather than spend inordinate amount of time trying to repair failed equipment under time pressures.
World SME Conference Event Flow
-Contributed by Veera Mavalwala
Day 1 of the World SME Conference organized by Milagrow Business & Knowledge Solutions kicked off on 12 December 2008 with a simple ceremony of Release of Milagrow Study “State of India MSMEs 2008” by Dr Jagdish Sheth, Charles H Kellstadt Professor of Marketing in the Goizueta Business School at Emory University, followed by an inaugural address by the Founder Director Mr Rajeev Karwal welcoming the august gathering of Speakers – from India and overseas - Government officials, media and a hall full of delegates from all over India. During the day other Milagrow Studies were released -“Government backed initiatives and the progress of MSMEs in India” and “Women Entrepreneurs of MSME Clusters in Hyderabad – How Women bettered Men”,
The Milagrow Values
-Contributed by Team Milagrow, Compiled by Sarath Srinivasan, Knowledge Guide
When the entire Milagrow team got together in July 08 to define the Vision of the company we also listed what we believed were the values and culture that bound us together.
Our Values
- Ethics – Integrity, Honesty and Transparency in what we do
- Trust – Believe in People
- Respect – For all Stake Holders
- Commitment – Own everything we do
Our Culture
World SME Conference 2008, A "first" in the truest sense of the word..
-Contributed by Tapan Bhatnagar
The Milagrow World SME Conference concluded successfully on the 13th of December 2008. The conference was a tremendous success, and I'm not shooting off the cuff here. The success of the conference is measurable in terms of the number of speakers, number of delegates, Press attendance, number of Partners, profitability, number of press ads etc.
The conference to an outsider would look like Mission Impossible part I - II - III combined, but here at Milagrow, as with any other projects, we are strivers. The conference was properly conceived and though we were on a road less travelled, we were sure of the positiveness of the outcome. The idea was conceived almost a year back with basically two ideas:
I. Bring Global MSMEs on a common platform to interact with each other as well as with industry captains and govt officials to interact and understand the challenges faced by the MSME ecosystem.
II. Take a leap as an authority in the MSME space in India
The Delegates at the Conference
-Contributed by Charu Gupta, Knowledge Buddy
The 1st World SME Conference organized by Milagrow was a huge success and went off very well. I was a part of delegate registration team where we approached various Associations, Banks, Retail and IT Companies specifically dealing in SME sector who could participate as delegates and gain from the conference. The Mumbai blasts tragedy had just struck the whole country few days before the conference but that too didn't deterred us and also our participants and we saw massive participation from the industry and the event was attended by more than 250 delegates.
Learning Experience – “Call for Paper” @ World SME Conference 2008
Contributed by Neha Bhatia, Knowledge Assimilator
Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do. - Benjamin Spock
Hard work, sincerity and trust in ourselves sometimes make us achieve what we think we would never be able to do. This spirit was seen at first of its kind truly global “World SME Conference 2008”. Two of my most enriching experiences during this time were handling the deliverables with Industry associations and working on Paper presentations by best scholars of India at the “Call for Papers”. This experience taught me certain practices to follow in everyday routine like
Milagrow - Venture Catalyst to Private Equity
-By Sarath Srinivasan
