Ludhiana: The six-month-old ‘Xcelerator Ludhiana - Sadda Karobaar, Punjab Di Shaan’ business accelerator programme has started yielding results for the entrepreneurs, who have signed up for the programme, and is paving the way for the participants to become local success stories.
The programme — led by the government of Punjab, Chamber of Industrial and Commercial Undertakings (CICU) and Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME) — is aimed at catalysing the growth of businesses in Ludhiana.
“After the first session of Xcelerator with customers, I was able to strike better conversations with my end retail customers and got new orders by talking about my products and my business value proposition. This has helped me scale up my business in a short period,” said Siddhant Pruthi of Robin International, associated with the programme.
Similar, WePay Finance director Jasjot Virk decided to take his lead generation on to social media platforms. “Our aim was to help people realise that WePay Finance could help them fulfil their dreams of owning a house and a car. With taglines such as ‘Rent Ko Kaho Bye, Apna Ghar Banaye’ and ‘Drive your Dream’, we were able to increase the weekly leads from six to 60 in the very first week of joining Xcelerator Ludhiana and have ever since multiplied our leads to 600,” said Virk.
With sessions spread over six months, the programme is facilitating hands-on training with the best trainers and practitioners from India, peer-to-peer learning and mentorship focused on ‘3Cs’ - Customer, Capacity, and Cash. The mentoring sessions so far have been hosted by industry stalwarts like Sachit Jain, MD and vice-chairman of Vardhman Special Steels and GAME Punjab Taskforce chair, CICU president Upkar Singh Ahuja and Romi Malhotra, former MD, Dell India and DXC India.
“The sessions have helped me train the sales team to identify and quantify the value while working with new prospects. It also helped us win a business that was stuck for quite some time,” shared Tarvinder Singh, founder, Technocrat Horizons, adding that based on the mentoring sessions, they segregated the sales and production departments, which has led to increased sales and higher output.
“We also introduced a new incentive scheme for dealers to motivate them to increase sales while incentivising timely payments instead of penalising late payments,” said Deepjyot Singh Sethi, Founder, Vellbond Industries on the impact of the mentoring sessions on his business.
Speaking about the success of the entrepreneurs, industries and commerce and information technology principal secretary Alok Shekhar said, “The programme had received 450+ applications from growing businesses across Ludhiana and after a rigorous selection process, 27 entrepreneurs were invited to participate in the first cohort of the Xcelerator Ludhiana programme. It is heartening to see that entrepreneurs have started noticing the growth in their business in such a short period,” he said.
He added that with over 70% of the programme yet to be completed, there is ample room for all participating entrepreneurs to grow and turn Ludhiana into the entrepreneurship capital of Punjab.
The Xcelerator Ludhiana includes workshops on customers, techniques on working with large clients, building an energetic team and getting international collaborators for their businesses. The programme was launched on January 5 this year.