India SME Forum on Wednesday announced organising a series of workshops for MSMEs in partnership with Intel.

Technology for MSMEs: Lack of understanding and knowledge about digital tools for communication has resulted in only 34 per cent of Indian MSMEs adopting digital means to interactions with employees, customers, and suppliers. In terms of full adoption of such technologies or software-as-a-service solutions, the figure dropped drastically to only 7 per cent, according to 1,29,537 MSME respondents in a survey conducted by SME body — India SME Forum. Importantly, despite 50 per cent of the respondents claimed benefits of using digital tools in terms of operational efficiency, customer engagement, and profitability, a staggering 70 per cent of the MSMEs cited lack of knowledge and guidance in using such tools, cost of investing into these technologies, and lack of skilled talent to manage them among the key challenges towards adoption of digital technologies.

India SME Forum on Wednesday announced organising a series of workshops partnering with Intel across nine cities in the first phase to “enable India MSMEs for technology absorption resulting in increased revenues, lower risks, reduced costs and sustainable competitiveness in the International markets,” it said. “The scale of digital transformation this country presents is tremendous and Greater digitization of MSMEs has the potential to triple the MSME sector’s GDP contribution, heighten employment opportunities for India’s growing workforce and boost overall economic growth,” said Vinod Kumar, President, India SME Forum.

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The government focusing on boosting digital adoption among MSMEs had in August this year launched a three-year project in partnership with industry body CII to enable technology adoption among MSMEs in India, as it looks to create 5 crore jobs in five years in the sector, increase its share to 50 per cent of the GDP in five years etc. “We are organising 10-12 workshops from October onwards in cities that have industrial clusters. We are looking to impact around 10,000 MSMEs through this project,” Pikender Pal Singh, Senior Director & Head CII – Centre of Excellence for Competitiveness for SMEs had told Financial Express Online.