Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) through the Central University of Punjab organized a two days virtual International Conference on “Entrepreneurship and Small Business: Opportunities and Challenges. 

The conference held on 26th to 27th August 2021, brought together faculty experts, researchers, bureaucrats, entrepreneurs, industrialists, practitioners and students to have a top-notch discussion, research lessons sharing on how businesses especially traditional Micro, Small and Medium enterprises could revive from the world unprecedented crisis caused by the novel COVID-19 and create new more opportunities and policies for inclusive growth and development. 

The first day featured notable keynote addresses coupled with technical presentations from practising professionals and selected papers respectively. Some prominent key addresses included; Prof. Taposh Ghosal, Central University for Jharkhand who presented on Entrepreneurship in the Age of Globalization. He acknowledged the growing pace in terms of using technology to do business and admonished small businesses to scale the adoption of new models in business especially in the era of the new normal. Likewise, other key addresses included:  Prof. Tapas Kumar Mishra, University of Southampton, UK (Rationality or Intuition), Prof Susie Pryor, Kansas Small Business Development Center, USA (The winds of Change), and Prof Tonia Warnecke, Rollin College, Florida (The COVID-19 Crisis and Inequality in the USA). 

Technical sessions continued on the 27th of August with more engaging sessions and keynote addresses including; Prof. Sonjaya S. Gaur (Micro, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises), Prof. Lynn Martin (Entrepreneurship and small business in changing times). Six technical sessions were held and the Afrivoices for Climate Change CEO John Baptist Kabo-Bah presented at the Agripreneurship technical session on “Leveraging Technology Innovation partnership for inclusion adoption and sustainable development: A Farmer centric platform to revolutionize Moringa.” 

The paper was acknowledged by session chair, Professor R. K Mahajan and other professionals and practitioners as a critical paper that has the chance to inform policy and transform rural communities especially with the sustainable idea to digitize Moringa smallholder farmers, strengthen strategic partnerships for rapid growth, support the holistic development of the Moringa value chain through technology and enhance farmers resilience and guaranteed market linkages for moringa products etc.

The conference was close preceding the last address by Professor Mamata Parhi from the Roehampton University, UK on the topic Navigating the knowns and the unknows resilience and small business.