In India, most BDS facilitators and BDS providers are in formative stages and only a few are close to maturing. Therefore, while developing the content of this chapter, European models are taken into consideration.
Start-ups and existing enterprises are supported by trained BDS facilitators and BDS providers in a six-month time period. The demand-driven 6-month BDS cycle approach is a participatory method comprising situation and problem analysis and action planning (one month) and the implementation of services to overcome the identified constraints (five months).
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The facilitators work with entrepreneurs during this six month period and help the latter with refining their proposals to set up enterprises, simultaneously complying with regulatory rigour. Usually they work in clusters of 10- 15 enterprises. The situation analysis contains the following issues:
The facilitator documents the 10-15 entrepreneurs’ problems and solutions and designs an action plan that contains the problems identified, self-help initiative to solve the problems and additional support required from the BDS provider.
Types of Support:
Depending on the needs, market research, product development, business planning, accounting, and cost calculation, access to finance, Government subsidies and procedures to access them; support for administrative problems, tax issues, premises, trade fair participation, export-import procedures, linkage to technology promotion and development, organizational development and linkage to industry associations or chambers would be in the framework of supports.
The main task of BDS facilitator is not to solve the problems/constraints by himself but to link to competent professional BDS providers, such as training establishments, marketing specialists, chartered accountants, cost accountants, legal experts, trade fair organizers and Industry and Trade Chambers.
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Those who are found to be experiencing difficulty in resolving the identified issues after six months will be hand-held unless the issues rest on non- resolvable fundamentals of business. In the case of the later the BDS facilitator moves to other groups of enterprises. There will be follow-up and supervision. The supervisor is known as BDS Team Leader. At the end of the six month period the BDS facilitators write a simple report on what they have achieved:
BDS is used in value chain development in order to solve important problems. Linkage is the main task of BDS facilitators, even if minor problems can be solved by themselves.BDS is used in industrial cluster development, in sector-specific and gender-specific interventions and as follow-up system for start-ups after initial entrepreneurial training. Networking is their key function.