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An acknowledged National Resource Institute for Entrepreneurship Education, Research, Training & Institution Building.
Launched in 1983, EDII is a National Resource Institute in entrepreneurship education, research, training, capacity building, institution building, MSME growth, innovations and incubation. The Institute has been set up with the support of premier financial institutions, viz; the IDBI Bank Ltd; ICICI Ltd; IFCI Ltd; State Bank of India and with the backing of the Government of Gujarat. EDII stands on the belief that ‘Entrepreneurs are not just born but can also be created by training and well-conceived interventions.’
Over last more than four decades, through strategic PAN India interventions, EDII has successfully established the credibility of entrepreneurship as a development tool. EDII has been recognized as the CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE by the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Govt. of India. The Institute also undertook the task of institution building by setting up entrepreneurship development centres in several states of the country including the newly set up states/UTs of Goa, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh etc. This effort was broad-based internationally too, with the setting up of Entrepreneurship Development Centres in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, Uzbekistan and Rwanda.
Institute’s Business Incubation Centre, CrAdLE (Centre for Advancing and Launching Enterprises), set up with the support of Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India, is focused on incubating start-ups in the potential areas of food/agri business, renewable energy and healthcare. Today EDII works in a collaborative mode with noted corporates, Government Ministries / Departments and regulatory bodies in implementing mega PAN India projects, with focus on policy advocacy & research; entrepreneurship education; New Venture Creation; growth of existing enterprises; SME growth & Business Development Services; sustainable livelihoods & global entrepreneurship Development interventions.
The Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDII) epitomises both a will and a belief – the will to advance the frontiers of development and the belief that education and training can have a multiplier effect on this process.
As the concern for economic development became all-pervasive after the Second World War, interest in entrepreneurship ceased to be a subject of merely academic romance. The primary focus was no more on abstract or theoretical conceptualisation; it now shifted to exploring practical measures to augment the supply of critical actors in the entrepreneurial process – persons possessing both competence and aptitude to initiate, nurse and expand industrial enterprises. Concomitantly, the belief in the efficacy of education and training to inculcate and develop entrepreneurial urges and capabilities also increased and programmes, directed specifically to this end, began to come to the fore.
The success story of the Gujarat experiment, in the meantime, spread far and wide and the Ford Foundation encouraged the Gujarat team to test out its EDP strategy in a few less-developed states. The effectiveness of EDP having been thus established, development agencies in many parts of the country mounted their own EDPs, patterned after the Gujarat model. The process continued to gain momentum so much so that, by the beginning of the 1980s, EDPs were being conducted in some form or the other in larger or smaller numbers in most parts of the country, under the auspices of a variety of agencies, including Small Industries Development Organization (SIDO), network of the Government of India which launched a national EDP for unemployed engineers and later, for the educated unemployed. The Gujarat CED provided professional support to a few of these. With the increasing number of organisations seeking such support from the Gujarat centre, it was felt necessary to set up a national resource organisation, committed to entrepreneurship education, training and research.
The result was that by the beginning of 1979, as many as 85 EDPs had been conducted in different parts of the state, training over 2,000 potential entrepreneurs. Encouraged by the outcome, the Government of Gujarat and the indusrial promotion & assistance agencies in the state set up a separate autonomous organisation – the Centre for Entrepreneurship Development (CED) – entrusted exclusively with the responsibility to undertake selection, training and development of first-generation entrepreneurs in the state.
This led the GIIC, together with other state agencies, to conceptualise, develop and mount in 1970, a three-month training programme known as Entrepreneurship Development Programme (EDP). The initiative was so well received that it became a regular feature in the GIIC activities. Some other state level development organisations joined the original promoter in sponsoring EDPs.
In India, the first few programmes of this type were organised by a foreign researcher, on an experimental basis, in the early 1960s. But, they failed to provide the desired momentum. What really inspired the birth of training efforts for entrepreneurship promotion in the country was a purely indigenous initiative, the ‘Technician Scheme’, launched in 1969 by two state-level credit and infrastructure assistance agencies of the Government of Gujarat – Gujarat Industrial Investment Corporation (GIIC) and Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC). The scheme visualised 100 per cent finance without collaterals, based entirely on the viability of the project and the competence of the person behind it. A large number of people took advantage of this scheme. The real gain of the scheme, however, was the realisation that India has vast entrepreneurial potential which can be developed through planned appropriate interventions.
An acknowledged National Resource Institute for Entrepreneurship Education, Research, Training & Institution Building. Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDII)