Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, Former President of India unveiled a unique Handbook for Entrepreneurs, an ICICI Bank initiative in association with CyberMedia at a special event late Tuesday evening to mark the launch of SME CEOs Knowledge Series (an ICICI Bank initiative along with CyberMedia), an innovative nation-wide program to equip the Small and Medium Enterprises with skills and knowledge relevant to their sector. 

The highlight of the book launch was Dr. Kalam's passionate message to the aspiring entrepreneurs to participate in nation building. Dr. Kalam is known for speaking ardently on the power of Entrepreneurship and its role in speeding up economic growth. 

Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Kalam said, "This initiative will create larger awareness among the small and medium enterprises spread across the country. The SME Handbook will be handy in creation of new enterprises, enhancing the productivity of present SMEs, reducing the sickness among SMEs and above all increasing the throughput of the SMEs significantly."

ICICI Bank, India's second largest bank, has partnered with CyberMedia, Asia's largest specialty media house, to launch this program to empower the CEOs of various SMEs by providing a platform for knowledge sharing and joint learning. The forum will cover identified industrial clusters in 26 different cities, offering an opportunity for the CEOs to interact with the experts in various fields viz. human resources, taxation, marketing, finance and entrepreneurship. The experts include practicing Professors from IIM Calcutta, Taxation experts from advisory firm Deloitte and Bankers from ICICI Bank. 

Mr. Dinesh Rai, Secretary, Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, Government of India said, "The Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises sees the contribution as well as the vast potential of Indian entrepreneurial enterprises. The Government is making all efforts to strengthen MSMEs to enable them to face competition in liberalized economy."

Mr. K Ram Kumar, Group Head HR, ICICI Bank, said, "I believe that the biggest of the multinationals worldwide started as a SME. Today, at this platform, I would like to exhort our Indian counterparts that they should scale up their ambition and focus on achieving the large multinational status within a decade. There is no time more opportune than now for this transformation to happen. 

"The SMEs need to alter the mindsets on primarily two fronts. One, think BIG, take the world as their market, adopt disruptive and not best practices. Secondly, look for talent not only in urban India but in the non-traditional places in India. This will help them to harvest talent from where no one is focusing on and not compete in an over-priced urban job market," added Mr. Ram Kumar.

Mr. Vijay Chandok, Global Head, SME Business, ICICI Bank, said, "ICICI Bank's initiative is the result of a continued dialogue with the SME community and reflects our deep commitment to further the cause of entrepreneurship." 

Mr. Pradeep Gupta, Chairman, CyberMedia said while the fresh entrepreneurial talent enters the ecosystem, the existing SMEs need to move towards clusters for International competition, "The initiative is aimed at helping entrepreneurs convert their dream and vision into reality. The world has taken notice of India's entrepreneurial spirit. Our effort is to ensure that the aspirations of budding entrepreneurs are not stemmed for want of reliable information."

Financial clinic, Mentoring session, Panel Discussion:
The first half of the program is titled 'Financial Clinic'. It is a first of its kind customised session where experts will give advice on how to raise capital for each stage of a business providing entrepreneurs with information on the financial procedures like debt financing, private equity, M&A, forex advice and other risk management products. In the second half there will be a one-on-one mentoring session with the experts, where each entrepreneur will get enough time to interact and discuss their issues and concerns with the mentors. 

The mentoring session will be followed by a panel discussion, where the panel in addition to the experts will also include local successful entrepreneurs from the concerned clusters. Thus, the initiative will be a complete package to empower, educate and equip the entrepreneurs for the emerging opportunities and growing competition. 

26 Cities to be covered: 
The cities to be include from North: Delhi, Gurgaon, NOIDA, Ludhiana, Jaipur, Agra; South: Chennai, Hyderabad, Coimbatore, Tirpur; West: Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Indore, Goa, Mumbai, Pune; East: Raipur, Kolkata

Clusters to covered: Pharma and Chemicals, Auto and Auto Ancillary, Engineering, Gems and Jewelry, Textiles, Leather, Travel and Tourism, IT and ITES, Metals and Metallurgy

About ICICI Bank:
ICICI Bank (NYSE:IBN) is India's second largest bank and largest private sector bank with over 50 years presence in financial services and with assets of over Rs. 3,767.00 billion (USD 96 billion) as on December 31, 2007. ICICI Bank offers a wide range of banking products and financial services to corporate and retail customers through a variety of delivery channels and through its specialised subsidiaries in the areas of investment banking, life and non-life insurance, private equity and asset management. ICICI Bank is a leading player in the retail banking market and services its large customer base through a network of over 955 branches (including extension counters), 3,705 ATMs, call centres and internet banking (www.icicibank.com) to ensure that customers have access to its services at all times.

About Cybermedia
CyberMedia, now in its 25th year, is South Asia's first and largest specialty media house, with fifteen publications (including Dataquest, PCQuest, Voice&Data, BioSpectrum, Living Digital, Global Services and DARE) in the infotech, telecom, consumer electronics, biotech and entrepreneurship areas, and is a media value chain including Internet (www.ciol.com), events and television. The group's media services include market research (IDC India), job board (CyberMedia tech jobs portal), content management, multimedia, and media education. CyberMedia also publishes BioSpectrum Asia from Singapore and Global Services from the U.S.A., the first Indian magazine titles to be published from outside the country for a global audience.

For more details, please log on to www.icicibank.com or www.cybermedia.co.in 

Except for the historical information contained herein, statements in this release, which contain words or phrases such as 'will', 'would', etc., and similar expressions or variations of such expressions may constitute 'forward-looking statements'. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those suggested by the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to our ability to obtain statutory and regulatory approvals and to successfully implement our strategy, future levels of non-performing loans, our growth and expansion in business, the adequacy of our allowance for credit losses, technological implementation and changes, the actual growth in demand for banking products and services, investment income, cash flow projections, our exposure to market risks as well as other risks detailed in the reports filed by us with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. ICICI Bank undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date thereof. 

For Media queries, please contact:
For ICICI Bank Ltd:
Head – Corporate Communications
ICICI Bank Ltd
Mumbai, India
Phone: +91 22 26538208
E-Mail: charudatta.deshpande@icicibank.com  

For CyberMedia: 
Sanjiv Kataria
Strategic Communications and PR Counsel
Phone: +91 98100 48091 
E-Mail: sanjiv.kataria@gmail.com