Please share your views on Cooperative Entrepreneurship.

Cooperative Entrepreneurship is a phenomenon when people (entrepreneurs) come together to pool their skills to set up an enterprise voluntarily and democratically.  This includes small businesses, scalable start-ups, large cooperatives, and social enterprises.

This is prevalent in several cooperatives around the world. Cooperatives are unique enterprises where members drive the business and profits/ returns are also distributed amongst its members. Cooperatives also provide opportunities to the people in a wide spectrum of sectors i.e Agriculture, Housing, Health, Banking, Travel, Worker, Fisheries, Social etc.

Cooperative Entrepreneurship at various levels is a special way of doing business wherein Cooperation among Cooperatives is a key factor and can be scaled to higher levels. It needs to be further articulated and looked into as a promising alternative. The idea needs further dissemination especially amongst youth as it has the potential to grow with a special focus on the emerging sectors of the economy. Globally, the movement has seen a steady evolution in the last 100 years.

Cooperative Entrepreneurship can be considered as a vehicle to achieve sustainable development goals and empower the weaker sections of the society. All stakeholders must discuss several topics including Cooperative Entrepreneurship in the context of the growing number of challenges for our socio-economic and cultural aspects of life. I feel that promoting Cooperative Entrepreneurship shall open more avenues to the entrepreneurs of the world.

How have cooperatives pursued entrepreneurial innovation while embodying cooperative values?

What is entrepreneurial innovation? To me, the idea of setting up cooperatives itself is an innovation. Different sectors and different cooperators have different contexts that need different treatment as far as innovation is concerned. The collective effort of the members in a cooperative provides a platform to synergize and innovate. 

Cooperative values embody some of the basic ethics, that if followed by the corporate community, will result in large scale change in protecting the planet and its people.

IFFCO fosters entrepreneurship intending to lift people out of unemployment; in this regard, intending to stop social problems through innovation and technology for the socio-economic betterment of its members by embodying cooperative values. These include an advanced IT infrastructure to keep transparency and promote voluntary and open membership, without gender, social, political, racial, or religious discrimination. As the result, today, around more than 35,000 cooperatives societies are members of IFFCO and are managed with the ‘one member, one vote' rule.

Practising the 3rd Cooperative Principle, IFFCO has ensured members’ economic
participation and has disbursed a 20% dividend to them for the last 19 years in addition to providing its products to the members at affordable prices. IFFCO through its subsidiary IFFCO eBAZAR, provides an attractive franchisee model scheme to the partner for women entrepreneurs of rural India with modern retail experience through the delivery of agri-input and services to the farming community under one roof at around 1200 retail outlets, along with an e-commerce platform iffcobazar.in.

The 5th Principle has further encouraged us to organize Programs, Farmers Meetings, Crop Seminars, Field Demonstrations, Sale Point Personnel Training, Agricultural and Social Campaigns, etc. to educate farmers and cooperative societies to enhance crop productivity through balanced use of nutrients. It was through its Entrepreneurial Innovation only that IFFCO was able to support 550,000 people in remote areas of the country at 1,400 locations in various innovative ways including ‘Break the Çorona Chain’ in challenging times to fight COVID-19.

Under the visionary leadership of its Managing Director, Dr. U. S. Awasthi,   IFFCO added one more feather to its cap by introducing NANO Urea, a nanotechnology-based agri-input to the world. This is an innovative product that will be a game-changer in the global market and will also help in fighting climate change.

This a true example of Cooperative Entrepreneurship put into action on a strong foundation of Cooperative Values and Principles.

How can the Statement on the Cooperative Identity effectively stimulate Cooperative Entrepreneurship?
 

The statement on the cooperative identity sums up the business method of a cooperative enterprise which is people-centred. The cooperatives have given the power to their members to grow, diversify, and create value for society. When members get maximum benefits out of the growth of a cooperative, they see a ray of hope and develop trust in the cooperative model of business. This can effectively stimulate only those enterprises that wish to comply with a self mandated promise of doing business ethically and equitably. Large scale implementation of the cooperative principles and values with facilitation from the legislative and policy environment will help all stakeholders to effectively contribute towards Cooperative Entrepreneurship.

It also empowers the cooperatives to build capital, one of the important pillar of entrepreneurship. Again, I will present the example of IFFCO, which started as a small group of just 50 cooperatives and has grown into a giant of 35,327 cooperative societies. The edge of being a cooperative has provided it a solid base of membership and a reach of 40 million farmers in the country. The desire to serve farmers as its members has stimulated the minds to diversify in fields of Insurance, Rural Telephony, Rural Finance, Agro Chemicals, Farm Forestry and recently Nanotechnology-based Agri Inputs. The desire to excel has also inspired IFFCO to set up plants overseas in Oman, Jordan, and Dubai. The pride of these achievements is experienced first by all the members themselves, which further strengthens the facet of Cooperative Identity.

What challenges must cooperatives overcome to become successful future businesses?

Cooperatives are already successful in present-day businesses. Cooperatives face challenges from the lack of awareness among policymakers and the other actors of the private sector about the uniqueness of this business model. This unawareness often leads to unfavourable policies and regulations that affect members and the true nature of cooperatives. Cooperatives have to overcome the following Challenges to become successful in future:

• Government Interference: Cooperative institutions were initially set up with government investment and assistance.  Thus, they were treated as if these were part and parcel of the administrative set up of the government. Government interference thus became essential elements in the working of these institutions. With changing business scenario and the emergence of new government policies, independence and self-reliance must be encouraged in the movement.
• Lack of Purposeful Visionary Leadership and Manipulation: The essence of the cooperative movement is that it gives the members the status of shareholders and economic participation. Over the years, this truly democratic idea got corrupted with vested interests of a few, this has altered the power structure of the cooperatives and changed the direction of leadership causing hurdles in the growth and development of cooperatives.
• Lack of Awareness: People are not well informed about the objectives of the movement, the contributions they can make in rebuilding society and the rules and regulations of cooperative institutions.
• Functional Weakness: The cooperative movement has suffered from the inadequacy of trained personnel right from its inception. Lack of trained personnel has been caused by two major factors. In the first place, there has been a lack of institutions for this purpose of training personnel.
• Lack of Digital Infrastructures: Cooperatives, particularly those with a membership that includes employees or suppliers need computerisation and extensive use of Information Technology for their growth. Without adopting digitalisation and the latest information and technology, it will be difficult to fight corruption.
• A comprehensive and multi-dimensional working research on regulatory and access related issues will also help us understand what the challenges are and how cooperatives can benefit each other at an international level. The two solutions to these issues I see are effective Inter cooperation and Enabling Environment.

How ICETT foresees encouraging cooperative entrepreneurship model amongst youth?

The ICETT hasn't discussed the cooperative entrepreneurship model from the youth's perspective yet, however, it is fully cognizant of the roles youth have played and will continue to play in cooperatives, given the greatly liberalized economies we all have become. The contribution of youth to the cooperative movement has become more important and crucial for the benefit of both youth and cooperatives. This has always been true, however, as I said, the changed situation of the 21st century warrants a careful look and impetus to young people creating and maintaining cooperatives and at the same time other cooperatives assisting them, while there being a seamless connection between the two facilitated by the state.

ICETT is a group of large cooperatives under the ICA umbrella and is a platform for these cooperatives to share best practices and help each other in implementing human-centred ideas of cooperation while maintaining their leadership as value-driven conglomerates of cooperatives. Firstly, we need to inform youth that "scale and sage" both are possible together. Just the top 300 large cooperatives are monitored by the ICA to generate interest and curiosity among stakeholders... this includes the state, private sector, civil society, and hopefully young entrepreneurs. So, the ICETT, with its sub-mandate on supporting the World Cooperative Monitor, has also the implied responsibility to think, and think quick on developing youth-centred cooperative enterprises, and that not only at the local level but also at the international level. This is simply because cooperatives are not just part of an international movement, but also are themselves international entities. I have planned to propose to the ICETT, to help the ICA in raising funds and scholarships for young cooperators in developing countries. Let us see how my fellow members of ICETT react!