While closing my last blog I had emphasied on the need of finding the right mentor for first time entrepreneurs. Needless to say mentoring an important companion to financial inclusion.

For many first-time rural entrepreneurs, formal business terminology may be unfamiliar. But the underlying ideas need not be complicated.

Maintaining records can be easily explained as keeping track of what comes in and what goes out under their respective heads. Cash flow can be understood by looking at when customers pay and when suppliers need to be paid. Profit can be explained by separating sales from the total cost of doing business.

Practical mentoring based on everyday situations can make financial concepts easier to understand and apply.

Over time, entrepreneurs can move from simply following instructions to independently evaluating opportunities and risks.

There is another significant change taking place. Business knowledge is no longer restricted to classrooms, training centres or printed books.

The internet has created an enormous pool of information on bookkeeping, marketing, packaging, digital payments, government schemes, product design, agriculture, food processing and almost every other aspect of running a small enterprise.

More importantly for rural India, much of this information is increasingly available in Indian languages.

An entrepreneur who is not comfortable reading English can now find videos, articles, tutorials and explainers in Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Gujarati, Punjabi and other languages. Voice-based tools and translation technologies are making digital information even more accessible.

This can significantly reduce the knowledge barrier.

A rural food entrepreneur can learn about packaging techniques. An artisan can understand how online marketplaces work. A retailer can learn basic digital bookkeeping. A farmer-entrepreneur can access information about markets, processing or value addition.

However, easy access to information also creates a new responsibility: knowing which information to trust.

Entrepreneurs should be encouraged to rely on credible sources, like government portals, recognised financial institutions, established educational organisations, industry bodies and other verified platforms. Advice involving loans, investments, government schemes or regulatory requirements should ideally be checked against official sources.

Digital literacy, therefore, is gradually becoming part of financial literacy.

This is the reason why I keep telling customers of VFS Capital that credit can provide the first push that turns a skill, idea or small activity into an enterprise. But the long-term objective should be to help the entrepreneur become increasingly capable of managing that enterprise independently.

That requires more than money.

It requires the ability to understand numbers, ask questions, compare choices, recognise risks and seek reliable information before making decisions.

For rural entrepreneurs, the combination can be particularly powerful. Local experience provides an understanding of the community and market. Financial literacy provides the discipline to manage resources. Mentoring provides guidance during the early stages. And credible multilingual digital resources can provide access to knowledge that was once difficult to obtain.

Credit can help start the journey. It is knowledge helps the entrepreneur decide where that journey leads.