Expert Speak: Mr. Ajay Wahi

SMEs : Your time has come but only if you focus on your people

India will sparkle for the next many decades. Our time has finally come. From being considered a slow, closed economy for years, we are now viewed as one of the most promising countries globally. India is everywhere. No company in the world can succeed without an India office. Our people are more educated now, and they are more demanding than ever before. Our citizens now want the latest: the latest in technology, the latest in consumer goods, the latest in everything.

Indian Market: Huge Opportunity

And who will service the Indian market? The entire world will! All global companies, small or big, want to enter India. Sensing this huge business opportunity, millions will exhibit entrepreneurship, wanting to grab a piece of the huge cake that is the ever-growing Indian economy.

So far, it is the bigger players who have been at our service. But with millions of entrepreneurs entering the fray, it will be the small and medium set-ups (SMEs) which will flourish because they will propel the drive to quench India’s economic hunger. Whether these SMEs service large companies or the consumer directly, their success or failure will determine the degree of the country’s economic success. With high passion and a deep-rooted sense of belonging to a country whose time has come, these SMEs have every chance to succeed.  However, to succeed, the SMEs need lot of support and guidance on sales, finances, market penetrations, strategy, automation, IT, branding and finally on people.

Focus on PEOPLE

I highlight PEOPLE for one main reason: they are the common factor across all the above areas. It is people who conclude sales deals, who invent better machinery for higher production, who think and create strategy, and who create efficient processes. So if people are not happy, then the best of strategies is doomed to fail!

  

There is another reason why focus on people is very important. Besides the fact that they make things happen, people will gradually become a scarce resource. The time is not far away when people will have 100 options to chose from. And they will choose to work with you only if you have built for yourself the reputation of taking care of your people. This problem will be exacerbated by the mushrooming of SMEs which will create unprecedented demand for the limited skilled manpower we have in the country. As the icing on the cake, it is expected that in 10 years from now, all the advanced countries like US, Japan, Europe, and China will have either too many young people or too many old people. India, on the other hand, will have the largest productive population (24 to 45 years). And it is this productive population which will be sought after globally to fill up junior- and middle-level executive / managerial vacancies!

You may say 10 years is a lot of time - why bother about it? But building up a company takes time, and in the few years it will take you to build a reputation for yourself as a desirable SME to work for, you will find the 10 years considerably shortened. 

So, if you are running an SME, focus on people from today so that years from now when you grow even faster and want more people, these limited people choose to join you! 

And if you are part of the Government or a large corporate player or a reputed consultant or a effective trainer or an association etc, kindly do your bit to help out the SMEs on how recruit, train, retain people because they really need this guidance as they will succeed only if the can make people happy and productive. If their people win, they win and if they win, India wins.

The author of the article is Mr. Ajay Wahi, MD, Management Treasures Group and author of management books.