Aidem Digital successfully completes Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business Programme

Aidem Digital’s Managing Director, Indi Deol successfully completed the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses UK programme in April 2013.

The Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses UK programme is designed to provide high-quality, practical support to the owners and leaders of established small businesses and social enterprises as they seek to grow. It brings together leaders of small businesses from across industry sectors and creates unique networking and peer learning opportunities.

The programme is delivered through a network of local partners who combine relevant academic expertise and extensive experience working with the owners and leaders of small businesses. The programme has been designed by world-class international, national and local experts in entrepreneurial learning.

During the course of the programme, every small business owner developed a customised Growth Plan to direct their organisation’s business strategy and expansion.

Indi found the whole experience very enjoyable, educational and rewarding being part of a cohort. He said:

“Working closely with fellow colleagues in my cohort helped me understand the challenges for small business were different for each individual but overall still reflected key factors all of us need to do to achieve our business goals.”

Participants on the programme benefited from a range of business support services, including, Specialist workshops, One-on-one business advising, coaching/mentoring, Access to professional experts, networking opportunities and Alumni services.

For the programme, Indi used the flagship project of Aidem Digital, the online publication DESIblitz.com as the business venture to focus on. The growth plan focused on how to take the publication from its current brand-led form to a revenue generating and self-sustaining online publication with monetisation. Speaking about the chosen project Indi said:

“The DESIblitz.com project is very close to my heart and my passion to develop it to the monetisation stage needed a growth plan which the programme significantly helped me with.”

“I now have a clearer vision of what and how I need to go about developing and implementing this revenue-generating stage.

“Something I will be doing with the tremendous support of my staff and team.”

Indi’s peers from the programme gave feedback to him for his growth plan presentation. These included:

Matthew Pearson: said:

“Very together. Best I’ve seen your pitch so far. It was really cohesive, clear and the proposition came over very very well.”

Anthony McDonagh said:

“Conveyed the positive impact of company really well.

“Good communication of skills and competence.

“Interesting focus on sideways expansion with different ethnic markets. Excellent point made about need to trademark!”

Emma Jennings said:

“Very confident. Team information showed lots of experience. Quality came across very strongly.

“Good explanation of the financial requirement slide. Very clear of how the money will be used. Good summary.

“Excellent answering of the questions.”

The programme has definitely helped Indi realise the business challenges ahead and organisational restructuring required to meet the objectives for the publication and how to develop growth model which can evolve with support and investment.