Despite having several business promotion schemes, Tamil Nadu is losing big businesses to neighbouring States due to lack of promotional activities, said entrepreneurs from divergent business sectors.

They were speaking at a panel discussion, ‘Scaling up Business in Tamil Nadu’ organised by the Madras Chamber of Commerce (MCCI) in association with YES Bank.

‘Lack of information’

They said information was lacking about various government schemes, including major initiatives like single-window clearance and Tamil Nadu Business Facilitation Act that enables business enterprises to secure clearances in a time-bound manner. Organised as part of YES Bank knowledge series, the discussions were designed to equip small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with information about resource planning and management of challenges, especially associated with scaling up in the context of the transformational shifts taking place due to rapid changes in technology.

In his keynote address, Dharmendra Pratap Yadav, Secretary, MSME Department of Tamil Nadu, said policy measures such as Business Facilitation Act and single-window clearance has empowered the MSMEs from mere beneficiaries to a questioning authority.

“We are moving from subsidies phase to structural support phase,” Yadav said, adding that the government would provide up to ₹10 crore for infrastructure support for industrialists who are willing to set up industrial estates on their own.

Scaling up

S Seetharaman, Chairman, Super Auto Forge (SAF), said scaling up production is essential for MSMEs to bring down the cost of production and to be sustainable in the long run.

“Scaling up production by itself will bring visibility to your product,” Seetharaman said and added that an entrepreneur must be careful about pricing the product since wrong pricing could lead to a disaster.

Although SMEs consists of 40 per cent of Indian workforce they contribute only 17 per cent to gross domestic product (GDP), said R Ravichander, Regional Director, YES Bank Ltd.

“Early adoption of technology and customisation of products will help small enterprises to grow rapidly,” Ravichander added.

“It is always possible for SMEs to scale up business yet retain some of the fine qualities of small enterprises like focus, quality and so on,” said Raghavan Srinivasan, Editor, The Hindu BusinessLine , who moderated the panel discussion.