CHENNAI ROUND UP

Reliance Commercial Finance in partnership with Sustainable Development Research & Consulting and several other organisations organised on August 23rd, 2012 in The Sheraton Hotel in Chennai the Fourth event under the India SME Forum and Award under a series titled "India SME Forum - Sustainable Competitiveness and Growth, Profitably' that is now being held across the country. The event was held in association with FISME, Go Air, Mahindra & Mahindra, SMERA (SME rating agency of India Ltd.), Bloomberg UTV and Laqshya.
On behalf of SDRC, Vinod Kumar, Senior Partner at SDRC gave the inaugural address, explaining the requirement for SMEs to come up and be a part of this platform which can go a long way in assisting them.
The objective of this event is to propel the SME movement by nurturing entrepreneurship and support SMEs across India.
The experts who shared their knowledge and experience about funding for sustainable growth with SME entrepreneurs included Parag Patki - CEO SMERA; Souvik Sengupta - Business Head for SME Loans at Reliance Capital Finance; Sreenivas Vudayagiri -Director & Partner at Peepul Capital Advisors, Sandip Sabharwal - CEO Portfolio Management Services at Prabhudas Lilladher and Vishnu Vardhan - Regional Head South at BSE SME Exchange. Panel moderator, Vinod Kumar, Senior partner at SDRC, cited various examples of SMEs across India who have become successful large companies and suggested that other SMEs share this knowledge and follow the leaders. Parag Patki, CEO, SMERA, while giving a lowdown on Ratings remarked “SMEs requires to get disciplined in terms of financial documents like maintaining balance sheets, ensuring regular tax payments and getting rated. For proper ratings SMEs have to avoid duplication of balance sheets."
The next session was on advantages of Technology Upgradation required by the SMEs and use of Cloud Computing with Shashi Ravulapaty - CTO at Reliance Capital and Yogesh S - Head Enterprise Solutions Business at Vodafone, as Panelists spoke on various aspects of how new technologies, especially cloud computing could help SMEs to expand and grow at a very low cost.
The Open House session was adressed by Shri S. Sivagnanam, Director MSME Development Institute in Chennai, "Key issues faced by SMEs seeking funding are, the mind-set of the Bankers in terms of collaterals; lack of maintenance of original & basic documents; financial literature, sound financial management and maintenance of working capital."
Further Mr. Sivagnanam, observed, "SMEs have to take upon themselves to pay tax regularly, maintaining a correct balance sheet and apply for intellectual property rights & Quality Management Certificates from local & international bodies; along with participation in exhibitions & seminars to get to the next level. SMEs can leverage on government schemes provided by Ministry of MSME and can practise Group Mechanism innovated by Industrial bodies. Under Group Mechanism 1 lakhs to 15 Crores can be managed by clusters of 12 to 20 members."
In the post-lunch session, MSME entrepreneurs present at the event got an opportunity to interact one-to-one with the various panelists, network and get their doubts cleared. Most entrepreneurs expressed the view that more such interactive sessions should be organised for knowledge sharing purposes.
The event was attended by over 100 Small and Medium business owners from Chennai.