Expert Speak: Mr. UK Sangal

3 critical points for fellow SMEs: SANTEC GROUP

To become an entrepreneur was always on my mind. Right after completing my BE degree in production engineering, with only Rs. 10,000 in my pocket, I decided to take a plunge into entrepreneurship and set up a company involved in manufacturing and marketing of hydraulic Presses & Cylinders. Santec took birth this way.


We started by marketing custom built hydraulic cylinders. Our basic modus operandi involved taking orders from customers and getting various parts manufactured through different manufacturers. Post this, we assembled the parts and tested the cylinders & machines. These were then sold under the SANTEC brand name.


Lesson 1: Outsourcing may not work for all businesses
It may sound easy to outsource different parts to different manufacturers and then assemble, test and send the product to customers. However, we experienced otherwise. During this process, I realized that to ensure best quality cylinders handed out to customers, a close watch on manufacturing was required. We rented a small workshop at the outskirts of Delhi so that we could bring quality into our focus.


This helped us have our first consignment exported to Sri Lanka within a year. We toiled hard, made dedicated efforts in the same. Seeing greater demand for our machines, we had to shift to a bigger workshop. In 2000, we expanded our line of products and manufacturing capacity at new facility in Mundka (Delhi). Now we have total three manufacturing units in order to meet demand of our valued customers both overseas & in India.


Lesson 2: ‘Getting it first-time right.’
Our prime motto, as would be for other business owners, is achieving customer satisfaction. At Santec, we have a special focus on this which helps us meet unique needs of our customers by setting high standards of quality and services. We try and offer best feasible solutions to our customers’ needs. This way we get if first-time right. This builds confidence in our customers. Today, we have our clients which includes corporate such as Tata Group, Aditya Birla Group, Amtek Group, Toshiba, MRF, Ceat, Bridgestone, Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd among others...


Lesson 3: Invest judiciously in right kind of marketing
I was fortunate to have support of my efficient & dedicated team of experienced people right from beginning. My wife, Richa heads our marketing team and has played a key role in the success Santec has seen today.

She has been proactively utilizing different forms of marketing to build our name in the market today. We have used the internet to the fullest to connect with our customers and find export business for ourselves. Associating with IndiaMART.com has helped us a lot in this. Such B2B marketplaces are not only cost-effective but also efficient in bringing business online from relevant buyers.

While these lessons are peculiar to our business, but I believe my fellow small and medium business owners will be able to relate to them at one point or the other when charting their own growth stories. I wish them the best.

The author of the article is Mr. U.K.Sangal, Founder and CEO, Santec Group.

National Manufacturing Policy to provide tax incentives on case-to-case basis

The National Manufacturing Policy (NMP) will be offering tax incentives on a case-to-case basis. It will completely depend on the preparedness of a particular state that aims to lure industry and also make it a manufacturing hub. National Manufacturing Policy has been announced few days back and that provides a series of fiscal incentives, particularly to the small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The policy is scheduled to be notified by the end of next month and the sops would be unveiled gradually.

The National Manufacturing Policy has bagged the Cabinet’s approval recently and it provides a plethora of other fiscal incentives for the manufacturing units that are located outside the zones. The units that are situated within the zones would be receiving extra incentives.

Read more at http://news.indiamart.com/story/national-manufacturing-policy-provide-tax-incentives-case-case-basis-148904.html

Shachi Engineering Pvt Ltd Tastes Sweet Success

Shachi Engineering Pvt Ltd was started as a consultancy firm, which later developed into a manufacturing company in 1998. The company was set up with an input capital of Rs. 5000. The company supplies solutions for industrial drying systems and allied technologies. It also supplies mixing equipment and provides specially-designed pilot plants to government agencies. In 2005, Shachi Engineering started its own workshop and now has a manufacturing facility with around 26,000 sq ft area. Their manufacturing units are located in Pirangut in the outskirts of Pune. The company’s turnover this year was around Rs. 10 crore, while the target for next year is set at around Rs. 20 crore. The company that started off with only four people has grown to employ 56 people. Fabrication work is handed over to contractors and sub-contractors, whose strength is around 40 people.

http://www.indiamart.com/corporate/success-stories/shachi-engineering.html



Expanding Scope
When Shachi Engineering first started over there was more focus on the state of Gujarat, which was fast-growing. In the last 4–5 years, the company is conducting increased business in North and South India. In addition to this, the company has been exporting to Sri Lanka and Egypt since the last couple of years. “Now, the Indian market is flourishing, and that’s where we are concentrating. If we can fulfill India’s demand, we will think of exporting,” said Mr. MS Shanbhag, MD, Shachi Engineering Pvt Ltd. In the future, the company is planning to diversify into effluent equipment plants for beverages.

Overcoming Limitations
The company has dodged several marketing problems during it journey. Initially, the company generated limited enquiries. Mr. Shanbhag explained, “People knew us from mouth-to-mouth publicity, a major source of enquiries generation. Such enquires were catered duly. But now most of the enquiries we cater to are mostly generated through the internet.”

Realising Potential
With India expected to rise as a formidable economy in the coming decades, the importance of infrastructure in our industry cannot be understated. There is great potential, which must be tapped.

Expert Speak: Mr. Ajay Wahi

How can SMEs retain, preserve and spread hard-earned knowledge


This same problem arose last month – how did we solve it then?

What do you mean you don’t know, why didn’t we capture the solution? Now we have to waste time to re-solve the same problem!

I remember such an issue arising – I wonder who solved it then. Let’s find out, and give it to that same person to solve this time as well.

Do these words sound familiar to you? Probably they do, and you are at your wits’ end to find a way to stop reinventing the wheel every time an issue needs to be fixed.

To overcome such a problematic situation, what I practice is to create a Global Learning Repository (GLR). This is a centralized storehouse of Learnings which can be accessed by anyone at any time, though the right to add Learnings to the store exists only with team leaders. This is to ensure that learnings are correctly recorded in an organized manner so they can be retrieved easily. And these learnings can originate from any event in the company.

When our Development department resolves a difficult bug, or efficiently designs a product, or is faced with a choice of many ways to architect a product and eventually decides on one approach, it is important to record these events so that the next time such a situation or choice arises, employees have access to relevant previous choices or decisions made, and the justification for those decisions.

Sometimes our Professional Service department, which needs to access certain internet sites to customize our products for clients, finds some sites very difficult to negotiate. It certainly helps to have a record of which sites are difficult so that we know this ahead of time for similar tough transactions in the future.

Assume you are about to close an important deal, and only have a 50% chance of winning it, because you have a strong competitor. The Head of Sales calls a meeting of everyone involved in the deal to brainstorm on how to close the deal in our favour. So the relevant salespeople, technical people, commercial people etc. are all called for the meeting. You brainstorm and analyze your product and your competition with respect to the client’s needs, and evolve a strategy that wins you the deal. It is very possible that a similar situation might arise in the future, with the same product and/or type of client and/or competitor. If you have a GLR, the lessons from the first case would be available on record for the other sales person to refer to in the future, saving you time and energy, and winning the deal again. Naturally, without the GLR, you would need to repeat the same exercise, losing time, effort, and efficiency, by which time the deal itself may have been lost!

The GLR would have the entire history of all learnings and how they were resolved the very first time they occurred. Learnings can be from critical situations, mistakes made, complex problems resolved, out-of-the-box thinking on the part of a bright employee and so on. For instance, if an architect designed a house on a hill station after heavily researching the direction and strength of sunshine in both winters and summers, it would make sense to add the relevant research to the GLR so that such projects in the future would have access to this research. Thus, similar houses would be designed faster, increasing revenues and hence profits for the builder.

Now that you understand the need for a GLR, let us see how to manage it, because a disorganized GLR is as bad as not having one! It is vital to manage the GLR correctly. As CEO, you must decide upon the form in which learnings will be stored. You may store the records of all learnings in spreadsheet form or you may like to use free software tools like Tweet etc. For the GLR to be useful, it is essential to categorize learnings correctly. You could choose to sort all the learnings by product or by learning types or by person or by skill types or any other criterion. Next, you need to decide who can enter learnings into the GLR; only team leaders have this authority at our company. This is important to ensure that learnings are placed correctly in the relevant category else the entire concept will fail because learnings are irretrievable!

Summary
Create a GLR, decide which tool will manage it (spreadsheet, Tweet etc), create categories to record learnings , decide who can enter learnings, and finally see how these learnings can be shared with the rest of the employees. But where do the inputs for the GLR come from?

The inputs for the GLR come from 2 sources. The KTs you would conduct (see Learning 23) are all learnings that need to be recorded in the GLR for future references. Similarly, all learnings which come from out-of-the-box thinking need to be recorded in the GLR for future reference.

Caution: The GLR must have learnings correctly categorized and entered in order to be useful to employees.

Employees must be thoroughly trained on how to enter and access information into/from the GLR.

Sum-up: Having a GLR saves time and effort, allowing quicker, correct results.

With GLR, the experience of all employees, even if they have long left the company, can be mined for the benefit of the company.

The contributor of this article is Mr. Ajay Wahi, author of management books like and the award for the BEST SME of the year goes to... and  Get Noticed Get Promoted.

He can be contacted at 9810027979 or awahi2010@gmail.com

Mr. Amit Sahasrabudhe & Mr. Milind Bibibkar, Director, Marcuras Water Treatment India Pvt. Ltd Share Their Entrepreneurial Journey

Marcuras Water Treatment India Pvt Ltd started in 2007 with a small group of people led by present Directors Amit Sahasrabudhe and Milind Bibikar. Marcuras started by subcontracting most of the work to other companies in MIDC Bhosari and Pimpri near Pune and by undertaking small jobs such as manufacturing skids for Thermax Ltd. But these operations grew, and putting together water-treatment plants for OEMs and end-customers became the focus of the company.

Over the last five years, the turnover has doubled every year. What was started with a capital of Rs.1 lakh, is now a Rs. 12 crore-company employing about 50 people. Marcuras is now exporting water-treatment plants to various countries and about 25% of its revenues are generated from its export business. Presently, it is also undertaking turnkey projects for customers like steel plants, pharma and power companies, as well as commissioning water and waste water treatment projects in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.

http://www.indiamart.com/corporate/success-stories/marcuras-water-treatment.html


Over its tenure, Marcuras has seen dynamic market conditions in which customers became competitors and competitors became partners and customers. They have seen the exciting evolution of the water treatment business in India and dealt with every obstacle by employing innovation and malleability. The company has faced the dilemmas of all new start-ups—facing industry stalwarts, retaining expertise and manpower as well as dealing with fund raising and other financial aspects of business. However, through tough times, the company strove to live by an advice from the founders’ ex-employer Thermax Ltd that suggested they conduct their business with true passion and by tackling each challenge head on. With this credo, Marcurus has done better and its consultants now promote the company as one under whose leadership ‘grass does not seem to grow.’


Being young entrepreneurs, Marcurus’ founders recognised internet marketing as a prominent means for attracting customers from all across the world besides using traditional networking platforms like trade shows and fairs. This has enabled the company to receive much of its business through internet marketing.

MSME sector's contribution to India's GDP will climb in 12th Five-Year Plan period: Virbhardra Singh

The Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector's contribution to the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will surge significantly during the 12th Five-Year Plan period, which will thereby help India to achieve an overall economic growth of 9%, said Mr Virbhardra Singh, Union Minister for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs).


This statement has come at a CII event on the “India Global Summit on MSMEs 2011,” here. He has also stated that deliberations are being held within the government and it would be discussed in the National Development Council within few days.

Read more at: http://bit.ly/qUrD6H

Union Bank of India develops mid-corporate banking vertical from MSME vertical

Union Bank of India has announced carving out a mid-corporate banking vertical from the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) banking sector with the aim to give focussed attention to the credit needs of the firms with Rs 100-500 crore turnover.


The restructuring has been done last month and it entailed the transfer of loans up to Rs 15,000 crore to the newly created mid-corporate vertical from the MSME vertical.

Read more at: http://news.indiamart.com/story/union-bank-india-develops-mid-corporate-banking-vertical-msme-vertical-148493.html

Leather cluster initiatives to be extended in Chennai: Entrepreneurship Development of India

The leather cluster initiatives now will be extended to the other leather clusters in Chennai, said Dr Dinesh Awasthi, Director, Entrepreneurship Development of India (EDI). These leather cluster initiatives that have contributed to the growth of micro, small and medium enterprises.

While, speaking at an event to display the success model, tested by the EDI, an non-profit institution established by apex financial institutions consisting of IDBI, IFCI and SBI, he has stated that the small units have been demonstrated how to achieve economies of scale, efficiency and technology upgradation in the cluster model promoted by the EDI.

Read more at http://news.indiamart.com/story/leather-cluster-initiatives-be-extended-chennai-entrepreneurship-development-ind-148306.html

 

Govt allots Rs 900-cr export incentives

Centre has announced export incentives of nearly Rs 900 crore with the aim to maintain the growth momentum in India. These sops will be helping those from the labour intensive sectors. This also comes in the backdrop of the slipping demand in the traditional export destinations like US and the European Union.

This was informed by the Commerce, Industry and Textiles Minister, Mr Anand Sharma, after a meeting with the Federation of Indian Export Organisations, the Export Promotion Councils and also the commodity boards.

Read more at http://news.indiamart.com/story/govt-allots-rs-900-cr-export-incentives-148227.html

Internet Charts Prosperous Growth Path for Shree Krishna Dyeing

Shreekrishna Dyeing and Printing Works (SDPW) is a family business established in 1957. The company that was started as a process house for textiles exporting later evolved as direct exporters in the year 1974. Today the company is exporting practically all over the world. SDPW has its own in-house warehouse where much of the quality assessment is carried out. It has its own specialists for checking garments, meeting the final standards for exports and packing, on its payroll. With manufacturing units in old Delhi, UP and Jodhpur, the total employee strength in the organisation stands between 150–200 people. For over the last decade, the company has conducted zero domestic business. Their export-driven turnover amounts to US$ 500 million at present, and is expected to improve under favorable market conditions.

http://www.indiamart.com/corporate/success-stories/shree-krishna-dyeing.html

Hitting Bulls-eye
SDPW exports to several countries across the world, including Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Pacific Australia, Latin America, the Caribbean islands and most of Europe. The company therefore thrives by maintaining cordial relationships with its overseas associates. “We still have buyers who are dealing with us since 1974,” pointed out Mr. Praveen Sadh, Partner, Shreekrishna Dyeing and Printing Works. These relationships help immensely today since competition is not just with other Indian exporters, but also with those in China. He added, “There were also some hurdles with the export policy—some difficulties in procedural things.” But Mr. Sadh believes that his business depends more on product sales than other things. That the company has resolved its issues is clear in its ten Best Export Performance awards from the Government of Maharashtra and three awards from the Indian Silk Export Promotion Council.

Marketing Acumen
To successfully market its offerings, the company believes in the traditional route of travel. However, in the last decade, they have embraced technology and moved on to the online platform.

Online Word of Mouth for Your Brand: facebook

Small and Medium businesses are always facing interesting set of challenges, which they try and address with innovation. With the internet becoming mainstream and especially social media taking center stage, businesses are leveraging the media to not only reach out to the intended target audience, but also engage prospects into the busiensses' brand value and communication.

Now track your brand's word of mouth on facebook
One of the strongest and the most credible ways of marketing for your brand, especially for an SME is word of mouth. A customer you gain by the reference of an existing customer can not only help you be far better operationally but also help you reduce down your cost of sales and also customer retention could increase far more for your business.

You can now track the word of mouth about your brand on facebook. The latest feature added by facebook below your fan page likes ‘number’ called the People Talking About! This number essentially represents the number of people who are talking about your brand (mentioning you in comments, liking updates) etc. in a week. As an obviously logical extension to the thought, the more the number of people talking, the more is your brand reaching out to the relevant target audience and engaging them.

The number as shown in the screen capture above, '284' shows the number of people on facebook which are engaging with the content of the page int he current week. This number obviously keeps changing and is publicly available.

This essentially will also suggest how engaging is the content on your page. This ensures that brands create more engaging and exciting content which calls for action from the target audience.

Team IndiaMART Knowledge Services is committed to enable SMEs with tools, tips and techniques to help them reach up the value chain and hence achieve the next level of growth. For more information on how you can create new opportunities for your business, drop in a comment to this post and we will get in touch with you!

Top 3 Apps for High Performing Sales Teams

The digital age and mobile technology have revolutionized business operations. Businesses today are leveraging technology to create the much needed competitive edge, which helps them stay ahead of competition and also innovate in the marketplace.

With the introduction of mobile devices powered by android and other emerging platforms, which support interesting business and productivity apps, businesses are empowering their sales teams with such technology while making them more productive and responsive.

Top 4 apps for a high performing sales team!
GoToMeeting - GTM is a mobile app which enables web conferencing in various modes as online meetings, presentations coupled with reports. To use the tool for free, you can visit the following URL: http://www.gotomeeting.com/fec/

Swipe the credit card, never miss an instant payment!
One of the major issues that sales teams face, especially that of the Small and Medium merchants, is the instant availability of card swiping machines. As money goes plastic, more and more customers are converting to using plastic money. Sales people need to be always ready to get the payments collected on the spot.

Here comes Square. The moment you sign up for square, they send you an attachment which you can add onto your phone, which will enable you to swipe credit cards and hence obviously be able to read them, just like it normally happens in the merchant establishments where you shop.

Payments from all major credit cards are accepted by the Square app. Its a free app and is available for iPhone, iPad and on Android devices.

Manage your salesforce data in real time on mobile!
Many SMEs are leveraging the cloud based services to save cost and be operationally more efficient. Salesforce is one such CRM on the cloud and to access the data in real time, you can simply get the Salesforce app by Salesforce.com.

The app is available for almost all mobile devices like, iPhone, Blackberry, iPad etc.

Team IndiaMART Knowledge Services is committed to enable SMEs with tools, tips and techniques to help them reach up the value chain and hence achieve the next level of growth. For more information on how you can create new opportunities for your business, drop in a comment to this post and we will get in touch with you!

Growth Journey of Veendeep Oiltek

For Mr. PM Bhandari, Managing Partner, Veendeep Oiltek Exports, success has not come easy. Considerable experience and ups and down in his niche space have enabled him to truly cherish the prominent position his company enjoys today. His work since 1975 in the area of vegetable oil extraction from soybean, sunflower, groundnut, cotton seed and rice bran, culminated in the formation of his company Veendeep Oiltek Exports in 1994. The company has seen considerable export success since 2000. The company that earned around Rs. 10 crore turnover at the beginning, earns almost Rs. 30 crore now, and the target is set at about Rs. 50 crore for the next 4–5 years. The workforce has grown in tandem, from 10 persons in 1993–94 to 30 people now.

http://www.indiamart.com/corporate/success-stories/vindeep-oiltek-exports.html


Discerning Factors
After the year 2000, when Veendeep stepped into the international market, Mr. Bhandari soon worked out that without its own facilities, the company cannot grow fast globally since there was a need to cut costs while ensuring optimum quality. Thus, in 2002, the company went on to build its own workshop.

Presently, almost 80% of the company’s business is from export markets. Now the company supplies rice bran oil extracted by the physical process to Thailand, Myanmar and Bangladesh. It is also negotiating orders in Sri Lanka, while has recognized potential in Vietnam as well. It is a premier player globally as far as rice bran oil technology is concerned. The company has bagged two awards from Engineer & Export Council of India—Western Region, for the year 2005 and 2008, as well as an award from the Indo-Thai Chamber of Commerce for work done in Thailand.

For Veendeep, marketing has never been difficult due to their popularity and favourable customer response. As far as the oil industry is concerned, there is good potential especially in Europe, since the demand for bio-diesel is increasing.

Safeguard Your Published Content on Wordpress

Small and Medium businesses are leveraging free and easily available, intelligent technology to be operationally smarter and powerfully address business challenges. Many small and emerging companies are leveraging the freely available web content management system Wordpress, to host their official blogs and in many cases official websites. Wordpress is a freely available CMS and is fairly powerful till a certain size of the website.

Small companies are setting up such web based CMS's to quickly design and host websites which are highly usable and can be set up almost at a no cost basis. You don't specifically need a designer to design your sites and you would not really require a great coding team to build you a great piece.

To download and host your own version of wordpress, all you need to do is buy a domain name along with web space and upload wordpress on the root directory, using the Cpanel that you get from your web host.

The data challenge
The one thing which remains a challenge still is safeguarding the data from crashing. There have been cases before, when companies have lost their published content due to server shifting/ crashing of the site. Some malicious code working in an unwanted manner etc.

Backup your data on wordpress DB
Now you can use WP-Dbmanager, which is a free plug-in provided by wordpress which essentially helps you in backing up your content which you publish using the WP platform. Since all your content is now saved in the database, it keeps getting backed-up and hence is safe, even in the event of a crash or a server failure at your host end.

Team IndiaMART Knowledge Services is committed to enable SMEs with tools, tips and techniques to help them reach up the value chain and hence achieve the next level of growth. For more information on how you can create new opportunities for your business, drop in a comment to this post and we will get in touch with you!

Design Your Own Great Looking facebook fan page

Almost every brand which you can recall on top of your mind, would now be present on facbeook. For Small and Medium enterprises social networks are a great way to go to market. Social networks are a great tool for emerging companies to reach out and engage with intended target audience.

The challenge: designing great facebook fan pages
One of the challenges which SMEs are facing is to design great looking and engaging facebook fan pages. For brands its a great way to engage with the audience it intends to participate with. Since not many SMEs can afford great design companies to keep their facebook pages engaged enough, there are multiple options which cost very less or are almost free for SMEs to get great looking facebook fan pages.

Shortstack: get fantastic looking fan pages
All you need to do is to go to http://www.shortstack.com/ and using your facbeook account, to login.

All you simply need to do is upload your official logo and other design elements which you wish to display on your facebook fan page. Also to increase engagement you can use the widgets of YouTube, twitter etc. available to integrate LIVE feeds from various social networks on your facebook fan page.

SMEs can hence save cost and leverage Shortstack to get great looking facebook fan pages each time.

Team IndiaMART Knowledge Services is committed to enable SMEs with tools, tips and techniques to help them reach up the value chain and hence achieve the next level of growth. For more information on how you can create new opportunities for your business, drop in a comment to this post and we will get in touch with you!