Google is keen to partner with small and medium businesses (SMBs) to enable digital technology,, according to Shalini Girish, Director, Marketing Solutions, Google.

SMBs are unable to leverage digital technology as they fail to understand its benefits and lack technical skills to go online, she said at Digital Unlocked, a Google training for local small and medium business.

Quoting a joint research with KPMG titled ‘Impact of Internet and digitisation on SMBs’, Girish said in India nearly 51 million SMBs contribute 37 per cent of the country’s GDP and employ around 120 million people. However, only 32 per cent of them leverage the power of digital technology.

For instance, Chennai has over two lakh SMBs employing nearly 5 lakh people but only 17,000 of them have a domain and only a small fraction of them have a website, she said.

Those SMBs that leverage digital platform grow their profits and revenue twice as fast as compared with companies that do business offline. This trend is among companies that use basic Internet tools, and the number could be a lot higher if they use cloud and analytic-based technology.

The study said that 52 per cent of SMBs who are digital are able to reach customers beyond their own cities whereas this number is 29 per cent for offline SMBs. Digital business generates five times more employment than offline businesses, Shalini said.

Google’s Digital Unlocked is an online, offline and mobile training programme for SMBs. Training is certified by Google, Indian School of Business and FICCI. Since its launch in January over 13,000 businesses are now certified, she said.

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