ISB-Goldman Sachs

It was exciting news for the women entrepreneurs in Kolkata, courtesy FLO Kolkata Chapter in the month of November!

Indian School of Business, Hydrabad along with the Goldman Sachs Charitable Foundation runs a global programme in India titled 10000 Women. www.10000women.org In this programme 25 to 30 under-served women entrepreneurs are provided with free management education from ISB.

They have proposed the very first batch in Kolkata for 2010 and had approached FLO to help them connect with women entrepreneurs who fulfill the programme criteria and help them in the selection process. While the procedure is simple and structured, FLO & YFLO put together their team efforts to spread the word and nominate suitable candidates for this extremely useful course. FLO Kolkata also extended the offer of nomination to FLO North East chapter in Guwahati to participate in the same programme.

On 19th and 20th November, a team from ISB consisting of administration members Saugata Nandi, Geetha Krishnan, Latha Venkateshwan and faculty Prof. Arun Pereira along with Lisa Macdougall, Goldman Sachs representative from New York came to Calcutta to interview 45 shortlisted candidates from 60 applicants. They were joined in by Salmoli Mukerji, Chairperson, FLO Kolkata and Manisha Kajaria, Vice Chairperson, FLO Kolkata on the interview panel. 12 candidates were selected straight away for the course to begin early next year.

The basic criteria for selection were:
Businesses should have growth potential
Women must be under-served and unable to fund such a programme by
themselves (having an annual household income of less than INR 10 Lakhs)
Businesses must be owned by women
Revenue of the businesses should be between INR 5 – 50 Lakhs per annum
This is a great opportunity and platform for women entrepreneurs to develop their management skills. For the first time Calcutta will a part of this prestigious course.