By Andrei Skvarsky.
About 400,000 Russians have finished or are currently taking five-month free online business courses for small enterprises and would-be entrepreneurs that are co-run and co-sponsored by Russia’s biggest lender Sberbank and Google.
The training, which takes between one and three hours per week, is part of Business Class, a Russia-wide programme launched by Sberbank and Google in 2016.
E-commerce, retail, engineering cosmetics, and sports are some of the wide variety of fields where attendees work or plan to work.
Sberbank and Google Russia said in a joint statement that 52 per cent of entrepreneurs who have been through Business Class have achieved better performance for their firms such as increases in revenues and numbers of customers.
The turnover of a firm owned or managed by someone who has completed Business Class training is on average 20 per cent larger than the turnover of a small business in Russia, according to the statement.
Ten per cent of people who joined the programme with the aim of setting up a business – a category making up 68 per cent of attendees – have been able to do so after finishing the course.
The statement said 52 per cent of current and former trainees were women and 48 per cent men.
It said 93 per cent of those who had completed Business Class were satisfied with it.
The programme helps develop a business “from A to Z, from assessing a business idea and opening a company to developing a financial model and a competitive strategy and putting together an efficient team,” the statement quoted Google Russia CEO Yulia Solovyova as saying.
“That is the main distinction of Business Class from other Grow with Google programmes [Google business training schemes in various countries],” she said.
“Quite often,” said Sberbank deputy CEO Anatoly Popov, “a small enterprise closes down after existing for only a very short time because its founder or owner has lacked elementary knowledge, skills, or some entrepreneurial experience.”
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