E- Revolution 2011: Be Informed and Go Ahead

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With growing opportunities for SMBs, in domestic as well as emerging

geographies, experts offered valuable advice to entrepreneurs before

they decide to venture into new territories. The third session of

e-Revolution 2011 (Day2) saw industry experts enthusiastically sharing

their experiences with SMBs and helping them see where the challenges

lie and ways to face them. Among the panelists were Manipal Dhariwal-

CEO, Sebiz, Hanuman Tripathy- Group Managing Director, Infrasoft

Technologies, Nadeem Ahmad- CEO, Jindal Infomedia, and Vikas Ahuja-

Centre Head, Infosys Technologies, Chandigarh. The discussion was

moderated by Rajiv Ranjan Jha, Editor, Nivesh Manthan/Share Manthan,

Zee Business.






Practical suggestions came from Ahuja and Tripathy on how to decide
whether an SMB is ready to go global or not. Some of the valuable

learnings were to first identify the scale of ones business and

understand the financial health of his company. With that in place, if

finances allow him to look beyond India, keeping in mind certain

factors can be of great help – decide on the country,

understand the business processes and challenges specific to that

country, partner with a local company as soon as may be so that

language does not become a barrier, use technologies such as cloud

computing to reduce infrastructural hazards and costs, and above all,

differentiate yourself from other SMBs already existing in that market.








There is no doubt that countries across the world are spending huge in
IT, creating large opportunities for SMBs in IT sector. However,

“Indian domestic market too is growing fast and online retail

is the next big thing, where SMBs can excel”, said Dhariwal,

who moved to India from the US to grab this opportunity and is now

making four times more profit in India than in the US. On the same

lines, Tripathy added, “It is best to focus in Indian

markets, unless you have done enough business here and now want to

become larger” In any case, India in itself offers tremendous

opportunities to SMBs and at present ‘action’s over

here’!






Overall, the session encouraged and helped entrepreneurs to take a
close look at their ambitions and make informed decisions whether they

want to explore the domestic or the

emerging geographies.