Published on February 8, 2011
A panel of experts from DSE, SBI, NSIC, GMA, CSI DIC and IIA etc converged at Institute of Advanced Management & Research (IAMR) campus in Ghaziabad, especially to discuss the means and solution to foster the growth of SME sector. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are rightly tagged as the engine of the modern Indian economy. The Indian SME market is worth $5 billion. There are over 11 million SME units in India that produce more than 8,000 products. Nearly 90 percent of the Indian industrial units belong to the sector of small and medium enterprises. The SMEs contribute 40 percent to the overall industrial output of the country. These enterprises contribute almost 35 percent to the Indian industrial export. Finally, these enterprises are estimated to grow at the rate of 20 percent per year for upcoming years if they will get adequate capital to expand. As per industry estimates, around 50,000 SME units are operating in Delhi/NCR alone in the field of Textile, Garments, Food Processing, IT Hardware and Electronics, Leather & Footwear, Automobile Chemicals & Pharma etc. although the SME sector is considered the key to the nation’s growth, still the lack of Capital, low profitability and higher output cost etc are the key challenges for any industry who operates in small and medium sector.
The two days seminar proved to be a stepping stone in IAMR’s endeavor to support the SMEs, educate and empower them to make optimum utilization of the human and economic resources to achieve success. The seminar provided a first hand exposure of SME problems and solutions including practical ways of Portfolio Investments, Cost Management Tools and Strategies to beat Competition, Managing sustainable cash flows, Risk Management, Branding through Quality Assurance, Tax Optimization etc to the audience and participating student groups. The expert’s panel addressed specific problems of SME Sector in the area of increasing profitability.
Besides, in sync with its mission to educate and prepare business leaders and entrepreneurs to stand up to global competition, IAMR also kick started an exclusive Incubation & Innovation Centre to foster innovation, research, and entrepreneurial, consultancy activities for small and medium industries.
“This incubation centre will provide a platform to Start-ups, prospective entrepreneurs to convert their innovative ideas into commercially viable products. The goal of this Incubation Center at IAMR, Ghaziabad is to promote technology based entrepreneurship and thereby facilitate practical application of knowledge for public use” disclosed Mrs Anshu Bansal, Joint Secretary, IAMR. IAMR-IIC wishes to facilitate the creation of ideas and inventions that benefit Indian Society. In addition, a Consultancy/MDP cell has been created to benefit small/medium enterprises in the Delhi/NCR region for enhancing profitability on a case-to-case basis
While addressing the audience, Mr. HS. Sidhu, Executive Director & CEO-Delhi Stock Exchange alongwith Mr. B.K. Sharma, General Manager, DSE shared their vast knowledge about how the DSE has helped SMEs in obtaining access to capital to create assets for the functioning of their business. They also provided lucid examples of how DSE, with their cherished history of market integrity, expert domain and market knowledge has played an active part in the progress of the country’s economy .
Mr. Vinay Gupta, Executive Director-Ghaziabad Management Association, the co-host of this event acknowledged the need of proper management if SMEs had to grow and prosper in the long run. His astute observation that SMEs are predominantly one person dependent being entrepreneur led, struck a chord among many of the business persons and they agreed that as the enterprise grows, a structured management needs to be present to manage and implement the thoughts of the entrepreneur. Mr. Gupta narrated the role played by GMA in organizing workshops in different areas of management to educate the SMEs to develop their competencies.
SMEs suffer from non availability of technology especially information technology, Mr Rajneesh Verma, Vice Chairman-Computer Society of India co-host of this event briefed the audience as to how Computer Society of India was committed to improving the IT capabilities of the SMEs through their various developmental programs to ensure that the benefits of IT advancement percolated to even micro enterprises. He narrated two success stories of use of IT in India.
Credit Requirement of SMEs, a matter of great concern was aptly taken up by Mr. Akhilesh Kumar, Business Head{ Dy.General manager)-SME , State Bank of India, who explained how the SME Policy of State Bank has benefited many SM enterprises in the backdrop of the Government’s objective to double the flow of credit to the SME sector from Rs.67,600 crore in 2004-05 to Rs.1,35,200 crore by 2009-10 i.e. within a period of 5 years. He also gave the insight that credit risk in the SME sector is widely dispersed and Banks get better yield from SME advances as against the traditional advances where the spread is getting gradually reduced. He further delved into the strategy used by State Bank to utilize its SME clientele base to do “cross selling” of various other products including technology-enabled products.
Mr. Satvinder Singh, General Manager National Small Industries Corporation, informed the audience about the steps taken by NSIC to emerge as one of the key players for the promotion and development of Micro and Small Enterprises in the country. Among the chief achievements were that the Corporation provided credit support of Rs.1094 crore during the present year to MSMEs as against Rs. 688 crore provided during the previous financial year, registering a growth of 59%. Under B2B portal, total 3802 members were added during the year 2009-10, as against 2808 members made under Infomediary Services in the year 2008-09. NSIC also organized 963 Marketing Promotion events including participation / organization / co-sponsoring of exhibitions, buyer-sellers meets and marketing campaigns as compared to 874 events in the previous year .
Mr. Subodh Saxena, AGM, District Industries Center enumerated the efforts undertaken by the District Industries Center to facilitate the various requirements of SMEs especially with regard to government follow-ups.
Mr. Neeraj Singhal, President –Indian Industries Association, Ghaziabad Chapter, brought to the kind attention of the audience, the various bottlenecks faced by the SMEs and postulated that the initiative of E- governance would go a long way in promoting transparency, reducing corruption and delays in execution of projects by SMEs.
Overall it was an exciting opportunity for first hand interaction of companies, academicians from various management institutions and speakers from leading government organizations. For students, the incubation innovation center facilities are free of cost if they opt for becoming entrepreneurs or self employed professionals