Myownbusiness plans India classes

Myownbusiness.org, the website that has groomed over 200,000 million people through its online course to become entrepreneurs, is looking at launching its physical classroom format in India within a year.

The non-profit organisation is geared toward the entrepreneur who wants to start a business, and the individual who has an established small business and would like to see that business grow and expand. The free online course also points out the mistakes entrepreneurs make and ways to avoid them.

Speaking to Business Standard, Phil Holland, chairman and founder of the website, said, "Since internet penetration is low in a few countries, we thought of starting a physical classroom format in addition to our online training programme. In the classroom format people get groomed by trainers and facilitators on how to set up first-time businesses. Currently we are testing this format in a few places in eastern Europe. We should be able to bring this format to India in a year from now."

In India, the organisation will look at tying up with local organisations, non-profit bodies and non-government organisations (NGOs) who could be the classroom trainers of this course.

"The online course is ofcourse free of cost. But we are evaluating whether the physical format too could be offered for free," Holland said.

My Own Business, Inc. (MOBI) offers a package for a facilitator or trainer to promote, organise and conduct the course which covers the fundamentals of starting a business. The course addresses all the basic disciplines that new business start-ups face today and has been successfully taught in seminars and workshops since 1992.

According to Holland, the MOBI course content has been created by professionals and successful entrepreneurs and is continuously updated, expanded and enhanced.

"We have 12 members who are our board of trustees. They also regularly contribute to the content of the course. The information available in the website is relevant throughout the world.," Holand said.

The organisation is also planning to make the online course available in more languages.

The website was set up in August 2000 in English.

"World Bank came forward six years ago and has translated the online content in six different languages, the most recent being the translation in Hindi. We are now looking at translating it in more languages," Holland said.

Other languages that the online content has been translated into include Spanish, French, Mongolian, Indonesian and Arabic.

The course is divided into 14 sessions. On an average each session takes about 2-3 hours to be completed.