ISMITA stands for Indian Small & Medium Industries Transformation Agenda. It is an initiative started by BizkrafT to help make the core of Indian industry more competitive.

India, with its population, demographics and growing international participation is poised to be a world power. There are many factors that need to be fine tuned to achieve this mission and "Atmanirbhar Bharat" is one of the key initiatives. If we are to make a global impact through our industry, our productivity and management practices need to be at par with the developed world. While corporates are making fast progress aided by expensive but effective professional advice, the bulk of local employment providers are small and medium sized family run businesses. They have been running in a traditional manner based on old money, relationships and focus on tight fiscal control. Many are not aware of more effective approaches to grow and even those that are find employing big consultants too expensive or culturally unviable. There is a need to create a customized transformation agenda that is inexpensive and works with a typical "lala" ethos while still providing tools and structure for efficiencies and growth. We believe that "lala" approach has its advantages over professional management in terms of speed and profit orientation. ISMITA is an attempt to uplift the bulk of Indian MSME to challenge global output standards while still nurturing the good in the Indian traditional business management.

ISMITA is still a developing concept in its nascent stage. As of now it is an idea that needs more minds and effort to make it a full functioning program. That said, there are a few principles that are in place on how we envision it to work.

First, it will not be a commercial setup driven by profitability. We would like it to be a volunteer based organization driven by passion. Volunteers will be trained at different skill levels at low or no fee with an expectation to contribute upto 4 hrs a week for transformation work where like an apprentice they will get a chance to apply their class skills in practical situations and build their expertise.

Secondly there will be a group of experts from different fields like maintenance, labor taxation etc. who will provide some services gratis and some on payment basis based on the complexity. This will specially help the small scale sector to take their mind off pinching pennies and focus on making their operations and market reach robust.

Thirdly, there will be local industry chapters and their relationship coordinators who will help identify and organize customized services to their clusters.

Then there will be a think tank that will work on policies and planning and give direction to this whole movement.

There will also liaison units who will coordinate with influencers like CII or government on specific resourcing issues.

Next there will be a media and information cell responsible for engaging and attracting passionate volunteers

Finally there will be administrators who will run the daily operations and internal information systems and pull the chords together.

As we grow in scale other roles like trainers, standards, recruiters, placement etc. may also be available

Most of this will evolve over time. We are of the view that since it is a non commercial venture, it would be better to start and let the initiative evolve rather than overthink and kill it. We hope to use the "fail fast" principle from the Agile project management for this.

The first set of roles we would want to activate are-

1) Transformation agents (This group is the backbone of HOW we fulfil the transformation agenda)

2) Industry chapters (this group helps us understand WHO and WHERE we serve)

3) Think Tank (This group will address WHY we exist and WHAT we do to stay on course)

The first pillar that is being rolled out is upskilling and reskilling volunteers to handle transformation.

The first set of enrollment is open only to those quality or excellence professionals who have lost there jobs in the pandemic. The second priority is for those who have lost their jobs and are open to reskilling themselves. The third priority is for currently practicing quality executives who are in blue collar or supervisory cadre and want to upskill themselves for higher responsibility.

This first online batch will be free of cost and interested people can apply for an orientation on the program plan by clicking on the link below.

Transformation Volunteer Application Form

If you want to participate in any of the other roles mentioned, please write to us at ismita@bizkrafttransformation.com mentioning your contact details and interest are and we will get back to you in due course