Dun & Bradstreet India hosts SME Business Excellence Awards 2018

Mumbai, 28 November 2018: With an aim to bring forth the success stories of India’s high-performing Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), Dun & Bradstreet India (D&B India), the world’s leading provider of global business information, knowledge and insight, hosted ‘SME Business Excellence Awards 2018,’ today.

Spread across two categories i.e. SMEs and Mid-Corporates and across more than 15 sectors such as IT and ITeS, Transportation and Logistics, Textiles and Garments, Electrical and Electronic Goods and more, the 9^th edition of SME Business Excellence Awards had 27 winners.

D&B India also launched the 9th edition of its flagship publication, 'Leading SMEs of India,' an insightful compendium on India's SME sector.

With SMEs playing an important role in the growth of the Indian economy, there is a need to highlight the success stories of high-performing SMEs, such that they provide the much needed encouragement to other entrepreneurs to perform better and set newer benchmarks.

“In India, there are over 27 mn entities which we term as ‘commercially visible’. MSMEs account for around 99.9% of these 27 mn entities, they contribute to 35% of India’s GDP and employ 25% of India’s non-farm workforce. In developed markets, around 50% of the entities are micro and 40% are small/medium. In India, over 95% of total entities are micro and 4% are small/medium. The optics of the India distribution shows a gap, which economists refers to as ‘The Missing Middle’. The reason is that Indian micro enterprises are finding it difficult to scale up and grow into small and medium sizes. There are four deficiencies they cite which are considered as deterrent for them to scale up: Access to finance, Availability of adequate infrastructure, Availability of skilled labour and Inadequate power supply,” said Mr. Manish Sinha, Managing Director, Dun and Bradstreet India.

He further said, “Access to finance is the most critical challenge and the MSME issue can be largely solved if this issue is fixed. There are numerous commendable government policies that have attempted to address the formal source of lending to MSMEs. However, the need of the hour is collaboration among varied players such as Reserve Bank of India, public and private banks, NBFCs, private equity players and others."

Mr. Vishwavir Ahuja, Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer, RBL Bank Limited, said “SME sector has emerged as a highly vibrant and dynamic sector of the Indian economy over the last few years. RBL Bank has been serving the requirements of several emerging and fast growing enterprises, and newer businesses and industry segments of the economy. The Bank sees a big opportunity to encourage competency in these sectors and will continue to serve the intensive and innovative financial needs of the SME clients, as a part of our strategic growth plans.”