Start ups and small business enterprises (SMEs) that want to grow need to raise funds. But, deficiencies in proper management of investors and improper tracking of progress towards investment goals can lead to failure for meeting funding requirements.

A software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform like ‘Apptivo’ that effectively manages all aspects of small businesses says, its fundraising application can tackle woes of start-ups and SMEs. There are centres of the company in Madurai and Chennai. The company is into development of a fund raising application built on HTML 5 platform. By using this platform, audio-visual presentations can be created and sent over to VCs. The VCs can also give their comments and put in money, everything done online. This fundraising collaboration hub is expected to be launched in India in next six to nine months.

Currently ‘Apptivo’ has 50 apps that can be of use to SMEs. These include invoicing, CRM, project management, timesheets and other necessities to run business. All these services are provided as individual web applications on the Apptivo platform. Forty-five of these applications are free, while e-faxing and email campaigns are available at $10 per month.

The purpose of meeting MSME ministry officials is to trigger the ministry to implement the draft government policy for making it mandatory to purchase 20 per cent from SMEs. The government has released a draft policy and it has been circulated to all concerned ministries. The issue right now is how fast it can be implemented. The policy will come through the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA).

Last year, the government has come up with the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Programmed for the SME sector. Under the programmed, there are various schemes like low-cost automation, basic software, direct patenting, promoting clusters, entrepreneurship training and market development.

Nowadays, small industry has to go through a number of procedures when it comes to registration. A small business has to be registered with District Industries Centre, the sales tax department incase it is a slightly bigger, and then with the Central excise department. Multiple registrations cause lot of delay.

The raising of interest rate by banks is also an important issue. Finance has been a key issue with SMEs, but now micro enterprises find concessional rate scheme for loans up-to 10 lakh. The concession is 2-3 percent as compared to the normal rate of interest. Loans are handed over to small companies at 15-17 percent.

In first quarter of 2011, consumer demand has declined. This is the reason for the slowdown in growth of the PC market. Small and midsized business (SMB) buying PCs has goaded the market to achieve success in the first quarter. Contribution also came from government buying as it was the financial year’s last quarter.

The major multinational PC vendors too experienced double digit growth in shipments of mobile PC during the 2011 first quarter. More than half of total PC shipments were contributed by the multinational brands during this period. Contributions came from Acer, Dell, HP and Lenovo that accounted for 50.4 per cent of total shipments. HCL, the local vendor accounted for 7.1 per cent of PC shipments during first quarter of 2011.

The company has witnessed exponential growth in India during past years. Souma Das, Infor’s vice president, says, “We are expanding our footprint in India by moving from mid-market to large enterprises.”

To increase the inflow of large enterprise customers and to further expand the Infor’s overall business in India, Das wants the growth momentum to continue. This is possible only if the economy remains stable.

Infor has partnered with local and global system integrators (SIs). This has helped it to scale its reach to customers of large enterprise.  The R&D wing of the company at Hyderabad is working to customize solutions according to the Indian laws, compliance and tax regulatory norms.

The company has seen growth globally with 17 percent growth recorded in third quarter and the addition of more 2000 customers. Infor has entered into Indian market in 2006, but its product Baan or Baan ERP has been popular for over a decade now.

“We don’t want to sell one solution to every customer, but we have some of the best breed of solutions for specific segments such as retail, manufacturing, distribution, finance and others.” Das Said.

This new product is meant to meet the communication needs of small offices, home offices and SMEs. This design is specially designed for SMEs. NEC aims to increase presence in SME sector so as to garner domestic market share of 30 percent by end of 2011.

Technology is one area for SMEs to explore and upgrade their capabilities so as to be ahead in competition. Taichiro Hashizawa, Vice President, NEC, says, “SL1000 is designed to offer a cost-effective and ecological communication solution with enhanced security features and scalability for future expansion or business needs.”

The previous models consume more power as compared to the new one that consumes 25 percent less. Hence, the cost of ownership gets reduced due to minimization of office electricity expenses. The project also provides for hybrid ports so as to integrate single line telephones, key telephones, facsimiles and other complex settings.

Shenzhen Tenda Technology is planning to launch wireless broadband routers, modem routers, Web Smart Gigabit Ethernet Switches, LAN adapters, fast Ethernet switches and Media Converters. All these products go in partnership with Salora International that is a leading marketing and distribution company.

Tenda strives to deliver affordable and easily installable networking solutions to its customers. This includes innovative and award winning products that enhance productivity. Tenda is now a dominant market player with millions of quality networking and connectivity products manufactured and sold.

Market Manager, Allen Yu, said about the Indian foray, “India is a very significant market for us and presents a huge opportunity to tap. We are very glad to partner with Salora International Ltd. as this association will provide strong inroads for our world class products in the booming Indian market.”

Salora has 28 branches in the country and extensive product knowledge. With the support drawn from Salora, the company can establish strong presence in India.

At present finding domain names is very challenging as already 1.8 million domains have been registered and more are added every day. But, this tool makes it possible for website users to search for the perfect domain name for their sites. It suggests domain names that Indian audiences can understand and also gives address names that incorporate lucky numbers of users.

The tool is certainly going to enhance user’s experience while registering names for their website’s domain and for suggesting new names that are Indianised. It is this Indianised name localizer that simplifies the user’s experience of searching for names while domain booking.

It is possible for companies to download Openbravo software, free of cost. According to Bartoli, out of the total generated business, India alone serves 30 to 50 percent in Asia-Pacific region. The company being headquartered in Spain is funded by some venture capitalists.

Companies are shifting to open source solutions due to the huge costs involved in ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solutions. Openbravo would soon open a development centre in India. The ERP market size in India is US 1.5 billion.

TCS is now entering a market that is crowded but expects substantial business transactions in terms of technology. The offering serves 130 clients though it is still in pilot phase. TCS chief executive N Chandrasekaran wants to ramp up the customer base to 1000 in a year’s time.

In next five years, TCS expects to reach a billion dollar in revenues. Individual hardware and software components will combine to form the new cloud offering. This will address specific SMB requirements as they can pay for services on a monthly basis similar to utility service like cooking gas and electricity.

The service offering of TCS promises to free SMBs from the burden of maintaining an in-house IT infrastructure that remains at risk of becoming obsolete. SMBs represent a good market for cloud-based services and this has been validated by analysts. More effort may be required by service providers in India especially when it comes to awareness and client education.

With this move TCS will take accountability for

1. Hardware, network, software & services
2. Its demand of cloud computing shall be on a rise
3. It will be made operational and expenditure based.
4. TCS will incorporate business process knowledge.
5. It will embed compliance processes.

A tie up of Tata Communications with Google has been announced in order to allow similar cloud services priced in a “pay-as-you-go” model.

SMEs have a major contribution in the country’s overall industrial output. Such enterprises contribute 35 percent to Indian industrial export and total production by SMEs is 40 percent. IAMR’s two day seminar is an Endeavour to support SMEs, to educate and empower them so as to better utilize economic and human resources and achieve success.

IAMR also started an exclusive Incubation & Innovation Centre is also initiated by IAMR so as to conduct research, promote innovation, consultancy and entrepreneurial activities for SME industries. The incubation centre will promote entrepreneurship and make use practical knowledge whereby viable products can be produced.

Rajneesh Verma, Vice Chairman, Computer Society of India, present in the seminar said, “SMEs suffer from non-availability of technology, especially information technology.” He also explained how Computer Society of India has committed itself to percolate down benefits of IT advances to micro enterprises by means of many development programs.

State Bank of India’s SME Policy has proved advantageous for many SME enterprises as the Government wants to increase credit flow to SMEs from Rs 67,600 crore in 2004-05 to Rs 1, 35,200 crore by 2009-10.