Financial support and further education in the field of business is the key to success of entrepreneurship in Russia
This is evidenced by the results of a survey conducted among current entrepreneurs and those who are just planning to open their own business in Russia.
A survey of business community representatives across Russia was launched by the Analytical Center of Synergy University in September 2019. For 4 months more than 144 thousand people took part in it. According to the survey, the Russians consider the limited finances and lack of knowledge and competences in the field of entrepreneurship to be the main barriers to starting and further developing a business. Experts concluded that among potential and existing entrepreneurs there is a request for financial measures of support from the state and obtaining additional education in the field of business.
In addition to studying the existing barriers to doing business, analysts were also interested in assessing the needs of current and potential entrepreneurs in obtaining additional business education. Not surprisingly, the main reason hindering the development of the business was not only limited financial and capital (42.6%), but also the lack of knowledge and strategy for scaling up the business (40.5%), which, experts say, indicates a low level entrepreneurial literacy.
It was possible to find out that the majority of operating enterprises have been operating for less than 10 years (84.7% of respondents), and a very significant proportion of organizations that have been open in the past two years (38.8%). This fact suggests that the motivation for doing business in Russia is high - there are enough people who want to open their own business and work for themselves.
It is noteworthy that a significant part of the respondents describe their business as growing and developing (41.6% of respondents), while only 8.1% know what measures to take for further development. Every eighth entrepreneur (12%) admitted that business is decreasing in volume, and only a few (0.9%) know how to get out of this situation.
The state support provided by the national project “Small and Medium-sized Enterprises and Support of Individual Entrepreneurial Initiative” is aimed at solving problems identified during the survey. These are soft loans to small and medium-sized businesses, microfinancing for entrepreneurs who for one reason or another have not used traditional banking products, grant support for small innovative businesses, subsidies for placing securities on the stock exchange, soft leasing, government subsidies for residents of technology parks, etc.
During the sociological study, educational directions with lack of knowledge were identified. The most popular modules in the business sector for existing entrepreneurs were marketing and attracting customers, increasing revenue and scaling the company. More than half (54.8%) of potential business people surveyed say that they would like to learn in general how to open their own business.
Experts also pay attention to a rather high rate of education of businessmen: among respondents in the category of “active entrepreneurs” people with higher education make up 76.0% (1.7% of them have a scientific degree). Analysts note that there is a direct pattern between the presence of higher education and the level of earnings. So, every tenth businessman with an income of 10 million rubles a month graduated from graduate school. Those who have received secondary special education or even completed their education by studying at school have an average income of up to 100 thousand rubles. Based on these data, experts came to the conclusion that the level of education of entrepreneurs has a direct impact not only on business development, but also on the income level of businessmen.