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Time of 'small' has come, last year Apple released its iPod Nano, which was smallest and sleekest in the family, and after that there was much-hyped dream of Mr. Tata, Tata Nano which shown to the world that small is really disruptive as it can bring a paradigm change
in the industries and prove that impossible is nothing. There was a time when people used to long for big, today the liking has changed (If we keep some exceptions like real estate out) and it has been rapidly caught up by industry biggies - on one side, Fijitsu and Apple have come up with the smallest laptops this year; on the other side, from mobile to hard disk, everything is shrinking into a pocket-size portable device.

Now the question is - does small mean that it has some trade-offs, is it compromising something? Today, in most of the cases, the answer is no. Small is as powerful as its larger counterpart, and whenever small comes into market, it instantly becomes the favourite of masses. A very comparable trend has been seen from last couple of years in industry, there is a huge surge in the number of small and medium-size industries worldwide. These SMEs are emerging as the growth engine of the world economy. In the EU, SMEs comprise approximately 99% of all firms and employ between them about 65 million people. In China, there are close to 8 million SMEs, and in India, the number is 4.5 million.

SMEs are also responsible for driving innovation and competition. These are the businesses which later on become some of the largest empires in the world. Recall the days when Infosys started with 5 man and a two BHK apartment in Pune, and went on to become the second largest software services provider in Asia. On one side, where big stalwarts of India Inc. are making news worldwide, back home the efforts of the small and medium enterprises are also gaining appreciation and support from all directions.

Great Governance: Indian government has been closely monitoring the development in SME sector and formulating many supportive policies to boost it further, and it has to definitely do this for a sector which employs more then 178 lakh people. For funding SMEs financial institutions like Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), National Small Industries Corporation have been instituted. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has already issued guidelines to the public sector banks to ensure 20 percent year-on-year growth in credit to the SME, other banks are also encouraged to provide loans to SMEs.

Advocacy by Non Profit Associations: Most of the Industry associations like CII, FICCI, NASSCOM, which represent all sections of industry have not only set-up a separate wing catering to the SMEs but also started encouraging SMEs by giving away various awards in almost all of the verticals where SMEs are functional.

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* Contributed by: -
Saurabh Shukla,
1st Year Student of Post Graduate Diploma in Systems Management (PGDSM),
S. P. Jain Institute of Management & Research (SPJIMR), Mumbai.