Inspiring

Entrepreneurship!
Learn how
IFCs Business Edge
is helping Pakistani
professionals, university
graduates, small business
owners and aspiring young
entrepreneurs
 Business Edge
Diploma in Entrepreneurship

In January 2013, Management Development Institute (MDi), a Business Edge-

accredited training provider, launched the Diploma in Entrepreneurship. Taught by
trainers with real life experience of running successful businesses of their own, the
diploma equips:
business-people with practical management skills to build and expand their
enterprises, and
university graduates with management skills to complement their technical
knowledge and develop the right competencies to set up a business.

The 12-week diploma is based on IFCs Business Edge training system and draws
content from a range of its modules. It has received such positive response from the
market that MDi is now training its fourth batch of students. A total of 50 participants
including 11 women have successfully completed the diploma to date.

Program Highlights
World-class content, proven in 56 countries
Delivered over 12 weeks, with two classes per week, 6.30 pm-9.00 pm, totaling 5
hours per week, 60 hours in total
Assignments and self-study in between classes
Assessment based on attendance, participation and final presentation of business
plans
Diploma certificate carrying the logos of MDi and IFC Business Edge
Scholarships from MDi and other sponsors for up to 8 female candidates
Guest lecture sessions with external speakers

Diploma Syllabus (overall 60% Business Edge content)

Introduction to Entrepreneurship
Conceiving a Business, Business Planning
Marketing Strategy
Sales Operations & Customer Care
Financial Management, Final Business Plan
Personal Effectiveness
Final Presentation & Award of Diplomas
1 session, 2.5 hours total classroom time
4 sessions, 10 hours total classroom time
7 sessions, 17.5 hours total classroom time
4 sessions, 10 hours total classroom time
4 sessions, 10 hours total classroom time
2 sessions, 5 hours total classroom time
2 sessions, 5 hours total classroom time

About our Training Partner: Management Development Institute-MDi Pakistan was created to provide value based organizational and staff
development programs, training and consultancy in Pakistan and neighboring countries. With experience in providing training programs to
executives and organizations since 1999, MDis expertise includes programs across the management development spectrum as well as
consultancy for the corporate, public and development sectors. MDi also operates an established Business School in Pakistan MDi Business
School that offers an international BBA, MBA, Master of Project Management and a Dual Master program in collaboration with the University
of Southern Queensland, Australia.
Business Edge
Entrepreneurs
 I had never paid attention to my brand. This is
Pakistani women
what the trainers taught me to do. Now I know
entrepreneurs get and can pitch what it is that I can offer. I
would not use my logo on pro-bono work that
inspiration and direction I did, but now I make sure to promote my
from Business Edge company and I am confident about myself as
a service provider, Naima says with a smile.
Naima Ansari started her communications Armed with inspiration, practical business
company, "Innovations" in 2007, creating management skills, and an air of confidence,
print materials for female entrepreneurs and Naima has now expanded her services from
setting up exhibitions for local merchandise. print to design and from photography to video
Business, however, was slow and Naima's and is inspired to grow further. "I encourage
vision for her own business was vague at other women - at the Islamabad Women's
times. She needed new ideas and Chamber of Commerce where I volunteer - to
inspiration. also make business plans, streamline their
businesses and think outside the box. I tell
She first heard of the Diploma in them that they don't need finances to start
Entrepreneurship at the Women's Chamber businesses. They just need to capitalize on
of Commerce, where she had volunteered the skills they already possess."
for years. She signed up.
Naima is a shining example of rising
She found the course to be challenging but entrepreneurs who are converting their
rewarding. With an education mostly in film visions into reality with the help of skills learnt
and arts, she was completely unschooled in through Business Edge.
how to run a business. She did not even
have a bank account. All that changed as
she was quickly able to learn basic business
management skills during the course
including how to manage finance. The new
skills helped her in managing her business
in a whole different way. The diploma
taught her that planning was the key. "I had
to plan ahead. I have started book-keeping,
and have even taken out a loan to invest in
my business, something I never thought I
would do. Developing a business plan
during the Diploma in Entrepreneurship
helped me realize that it would be easy to
pay back any loan I took out to invest in
technology, Naima recalls.
Business Edge
Entrepreneurs
 Nadia realized that eveNadia was intrigued by
Pakistani women the diplomas emphasis on developing
entrepreneurs find a networks and establishing partners to grow
business, instead of just relying on ones own
whole new way of doing resources. . She decided to partner with a
high profile business to venture into real
business with Business estate, logistics and the food industries.

Edge Nadia has doubled her staff since then, is

After six years in the business of running a
successful event management and
marketing company, Nadia Gillani an MBA
graduate, felt her business had become
stagnant.
taking on bigger events now. "I have become
much more focused on what I need to do to
take my business forward and I can already
see big changes in my companys structure.. I
can now see my company growing fast, she
said.

Nadia realized that event management She attributes some of the bold steps she has
companies were sprouting up often and taken to grow her business to the diploma
quickly dying in a market that was she took. Even though I was already an
increasingly becoming more demanding, entrepreneur, I began to look at my business
saturated and technical. She was looking for as a new entrepreneur and was then able to
a way forward. The Diploma in make big changes to take my business to the
Entrepreneurship seemed to offer hope. next level.
For Nadia, the combination of new found
leadership skills, the knowledge of how to
streamline her business processes and the
confidence to pursue new avenues for her
business was the recipe for success.

Even though I was already running my own

business, I began to look at my business
from an new perspective, based on the new
skills I had learn during the diploma and
made changes to the way I was running my
business to take it to the next level.

The diploma emphasized discipline and

record-keeping in operations management,
something Nadia had never really paid
much attention to. "I had never maintained
proper business records or observed strict
working hours. As soon as I did, I increased
my productivity and performance., she
explained.

Nadia also learnt that she needed to put in

resources in the right areas of her business,
offering every opportunity to her potential
clients to contact her easily. I decided to
invest in new offices, in a more posh
location to attract higher end clientele.
Business Edge
Entrepreneurs
 Khan, one of over 50 participants who have
Young Pakistani Entrepreneurs successfully completed the diploma so far, learned
get a different kind of how to understand the market and identify its
needs. He discovered resourceful ways to find
education with Business Edge suppliers. Six months after completing the course,
he partnered with a friend to launch an interior
design and construction start-up Emarat Interiors.
Learning how to start and run a business often
He knew that for a small firm, publicity would be a
needs a guiding hand. For twenty-one year old
challenge. But the Diploma had shown him creative
Usama Hamid Khan, an IFC-backed diploma in
ways to use word of mouth, budgeted, social media
entrepreneurship put him on the right track.
marketing that has brought him customers. In one
example, Khans Facebook page lured in 30
In his native Pakistan, a country of 180 million
percent new customers, he said.
people, Khans choice to start his own private
business has helped him create a job for himself
With unemployment reaching 6 percent in the last
and a small team of employees. In a nation where
year in Pakistan, the young and enthusiastic Khan
over 90 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
has found a welcome way to create an income for
originates from the private sector, nearly 70 percent
himself and others. He is now employing one full-
of that comes from small firms.
time and five part-time staff members.
Khan borrowed capital from his father, yet was
Khan knows he still has a long way to go and
anxious about his ability to manage the risk. Luckily,
believes this is just the beginning.
the diploma offered by Management Development
Institute (MDi) in collaboration with IFCs Business
While attending this course, I developed the blue
Edge program taught him how to budget his
print of the business idea, he said. If anyone
investment, giving him a boost of confidence to take
wants to start a business and is lost on how to take
the leap and become the first person in his family to
the first step, this is a good place.
run his own business.

The course taught me how to be my own boss,

how to plan my own business, and how to start an
entrepreneurial venture, he said.
The trainers had hands on experience and were
entrepreneurs themselves.

Backed by IFC and delivered by certified local

trainers, Business Edge is a world-class training
system that strengthens the management skills of
owners, managers and staff of small and medium-
sized enterprises (SMEs). Youth, hungry for these
skills, are a growing target too.

Management Development Institute (MDi) joined

the Business Edge program in January 2010 and
has already trained over 1,350 participants in 65
Business Edge workshops, offering them practical
management tools. The Institute developed and
launched the Diploma in Entrepreneurship in
January 2013, drawing on a package of different
Business Edge modules.
Elvira Van Daele
Program Lead
SME Capacity Building and Better Work MENA
IFC-Cross Cutting Advisory Solutions
Address: Nile City Towers, North Tower, 25th Floor
2005C, Corniche El-Nil, Ramlet Boulac
Cario, Egypt
Tel; + 20 -2-246-4389
Email: EVandaele@ifc.org
www.businessedgeworld.com