Laid-off execs get help to be own bosses
Polytechnics offer courses to train them to start their own businesses
By Cassandra Chew
HELP is at hand for retrenched executives keen to start their own businesses.
The five polytechnics here are rolling out entrepreneurship courses geared to the group of professionals, managers, executives and technicians collectively referred to as PMETs.
There will be up to 500 training places initially, but more will be available if there is demand for the courses developed jointly by the schools, Spring Singapore and the Action Community for Entrepreneurship (ACE).
Announcing this yesterday, Trade and Industry Minister Lim Hng Kiang noted that despite the economic downturn, the number of new start-ups has not dipped in recent months.
‘Perhaps the weaker job market has even prompted more entrepreneurs to seize the opportunity to set up their own businesses,’ he said.
Addressing the annual ACE Bluesky Festival, an entrepreneurship conference, at the Ritz-Carlton Millenia, he cited two who succeeded in making the switch from being employees to becoming their own bosses.
After more than 20 years in the telecoms industry, Mr Yeo Poh Seng started Asiatel, offering telecommunications services to businesses. He now employs 14 people and has expanded to Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines.
Ms Pranoti Israni was designing appliances for a multinational here, when she wondered about the hundreds of millions of women in India who make chapattis by hand every day.
She started her own company, Zimplistic, and led a team to create an automatic flatbread maker that won the top prize in the Start-up at Singapore competition.
There is inspiration aplenty, and the polytechnic courses will equip retrenched PMETs with the know-how to take the leap.
This group made up 42 per cent of workers retrenched between January and March this year.
By April, enterprise development centres run by business associations reported seeing more PMETs asking how to start their own businesses.
That soon led to the idea of running courses for them.
Mr Sim Choon Siong, Spring’s deputy director of entrepreneurship development, said: ‘A lot of PMETs who are thinking of entrepreneurship may be very good in their job as professionals, but may not be exposed to the business aspects of things. These courses will introduce them to these elements.’
Spring has set aside $500,000 to support up to 70 per cent of course fees for the new courses until May next year, with each school receiving up to $100,000.
There will be a mix of seminars, projects and assignments tailored for PMETs, and participants will be expected to come up with a viable business plan at the end of the course.
They will be taught by experienced entrepreneurs and academics who will help them identify business opportunities, develop business plans, determine the resources they need, and ways to grow the enterprise.
Both full-time and part-time training will be offered, with courses expected to run between one and 15 weeks.
The programmes, which cost between $200 and $500, will start between August and September. PMETs with at least a diploma can sign up directly with the polytechnic of their choice.
Temasek Polytechnic and Singapore Polytechnic have already been given the go-ahead to start, and Spring is evaluating proposals from the other schools.
Singapore Professional Centre chairman Colin Koh said executives keen to start their own business as consultants and educators now have help to become aware of the opportunities.
Former IT manager Victor Tan, 49, who was retrenched from a multinational company in April, is one of them.
Toying with the idea of starting his own IT solutions firm, he said: ‘I will definitely sign up for the course because I need to know the fundamentals of a start-up.’
casschew@sph.com.sg
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