Federation of Indian Micro and Small & Medium Enterprises (FISME), an apex industry body, and Microsoft have come together to enable more than 10,000 Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises across the country to adopt information technology and cloud computing.
This will help them to connect better with their existing customers and reach out to potential customers across India announced the press release.
India’s SMB segment is playing a significant role in India’s economy. According to the NASSCOM and Frost & Sullivan report – India SMB Market – Monetizing Emerging Opportunities (2014), it employs approximately 40 per cent of India’s workforce, contributes more than 17% to national GDP, has close to 45 per cent share in manufacturing output and accounts for about 40 per cent of India’s total exports.
Findings of a survey conducted by Greyhound Research state that organizations in Delhi NCR have limited understanding of information systems and technology is a barrier for providing improved customer engagement. It stated that 88% organizations in Delhi NCR treat customer engagement as a top business priority for FY 2015‐16. Some deterrents to the same, however, are limited understanding about information systems to reach out to customers, lowering cost of IT Infrastructure as a top business priority and that despite the lack of required knowledge, they are looking towards adopting cloud and sophisticated technology solutions to reduce their inherent workloads.
Meetul Patel, General Manager – SMS&P, Microsoft India, said, “Information Technology is opening up new avenues of growth for SMBs globally. Through our association with FISME, we are able to reach out to thousands of SMBs and enable them to leverage affordable cloud-based services. This will empower SMBs to access new markets and enable them to engage with customers more efficiently and manage their costs better. In addition, these technologies and services help SMBs focus on their core business and not on basic IT infrastructure. The result is profitable, accelerated growth.”
