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Unleashing SME Power

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DQI Bureau
New Update

Meet Ganesh Iyer–a young entrepreneurial lad in the bustling megapolis of

Mumbai who has set up a one-man outfit that creates websites for small firms

that want to experience e-commerce but don’t have the wherewithal to engage a

formal software company, or an interactive agency to build their Web presence.

Ganesh Iyer, in the true spirit of home delivery, does all this and more for his

growing tribe of clients and makes a decent living while dreaming the Bill Gates

dream!

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"In

the face of uncertainties, the time has come to reassess the status

and future direction of



the SW industry"

Ganesh

Natarajan

Meet Vishwas Mahajan–a successful entrepreneur who came back from the gulf

to join his partner Uday in a startup that dared to tread the path less traveled–the

product path. Today, the duo has completed many successful installations of

their web based project management product in global firms in India and abroad

and have notched up revenues and profitability that puts a smile on their faces.

And Meet Manu Parpia–professional-turned-entrepreneur who runs one of India’s

niche success stories–Geometric Software. It has caught the fancy of major

engineering consulting firms as well as stock market analysts with a capability

set that is unique and robust at the same time.

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What is common to these three entrepreneurs and their companies–they are

all highly motivated participants in the Indian software dream and all fit into

the category of SMEs (Rs 0-100 crore) that Nasscom has decided to work closely

with in the coming months. The Nasscom SME forum’s launch in Pune saw 60 such

firms coming together–some to complain, some to discover and some to partner,

but all to join hands in a dream that may paint a bright new picture for the

Indian software sector in the quest of a global superpower destiny.

The power of the SME is not a new idea–in fact, in many countries in

continental Europe, small and focussed solution providers are much in demand for

the depth and quality of their services and if the Indian industry is to achieve

the $50-billion export dream, a god percentage of this will have to be SME-contributed

and enabled.

The action agenda identified by the SME forum, which ranges

from disseminating focused industry research and market intelligence to best

practices sharing in quality and human resource management to creation of

funding options and forums for market and technology access, aims to dispel the

distrust many small companies have in their larger brethren as well as in

industry associations which are often perceived to be "by the big, of the

big, for the big".

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The road ahead is not without its share of challenges. Some

of the issues that came up at the forum were the protection of intellectual

property, created with much blood, sweat and tears by the SME which can be

replicated by a team set up by a big firm, the difficulties involved in getting

reasonable pricing from governments and even private sector companies and the

lack of professionalism sometimes displayed by larger firms in using the

services of smaller firms and paying for them in time. And of course the major

problem of market access. With one ambitious but wrongly placed or wrongly timed

sales office abroad having the tendency to suck out a year’s profits in a few

weeks, there is no avoiding the fact that it is only wise counsel and partnering

in a truly symbiotic relationship that can make the mission successful in the

months to come.

The SME spirit that is being unleashed by Nasscom through

three such forums–in West, North and South India has the laudable objective of

changing the growth path of a thousand small firms and getting them entrenched

in the global IT firmament. With Nasscom continuing to do yeoman work in opening

new markets, dealing with Governments abroad and helping companies, big, medium

and small to find new lands to conquer and the Confederation of Indian Industry

doing its bit to encourage domestic proliferation and improve the infrastructure

in the states, the sun is in no danger of setting on the Indian software

industry!

Ganesh Natarajan



The author is the CEO of Zensar Technologies

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