Small Industry associations need to be stronger: Madhav Lal

One of the biggest handicaps small companies in India face is having inadequate information.

The bigger players are better networked and have more resources to allocate for information gathering.

So, how to remove this information deficit? The normal method is to put all sorts of information on the ministry website, hold awareness programmes, and so on. But now the ministry is also approaching small industry associations. This is an integral part of the outreach programme to SMEs. There are industry associations in specific industries, per cluster, as well as associations representing small companies in a particular region. These can be important touch points to gather information on what is troubling the industry.

Said Madhav Lal, Secretary of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, "A lot needs to be done by the industries too.

They need to connect with the mainstream economy and communicate. Our academic institutions are not able to transfer knowledge to the industry because both continue to work in their own silos. These associations are not that well organised, because the SME members are not active. They do not contribute to the association's resources. You need full- time people at these associations to be able to make it functional for their members . We are now trying to do a benchmarking of these associations.

They should charge their members a fee to be able to provide some services.

We are trying to create a platform on the lines of a virtual cluster of enterprises where all these stakeholders can come together and talk to one another. All this does not necessarily involve money, but advocacy and strategic thinking", The ministry is also launching new initiatives. With the

The ministry recently piloted a proposal before the Cabinet for setting up the India Inclusive Innovation Fund. It will act as an early stage venture fund to fund businesses which can make an impact on the poorer sections of society. The minimum fund size will be ` 500 crore and the maximum size can be as much as ` 5,000 crore. " We are also proposing a push to upscale village industry clusters. Through Prime Minister's Employment Generation Programme for which the nodal agency is the Khadi and Village Industries Commission, we have a target of supporting 100 new enterprises in each district of India. So assuming that there are about 600 to 650 districts, about 60, 000 new enterprises will be created", said Lal.