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Finance Fundamentals
Keep a close eye on financial performance
 The small business owners should keep track of the financial performance of their business, irrespective to its size. Time and limited resource should never come in way of evaluating the performance. Ignoring financial evaluation will invite problems whereas, good assessment mechanism will ring alarm bell before the problems turn complex.
Marketing Mantras
Competing with mega brands, requires marketing skills
 Internet marketing has taken world by storm and it is transforming the business drastically. It is important to maintain the traffic to be converted into cash so as to ride on success continuously. There are certain points to be kept in mind for maintaining consistent visits on the website.
8 Tips to Keep Your SME Safe Online
 The security of the website for any SME is crucial, as the website can be accessed by anyone and there is possibility that a hacker could find ways to enter into the website. They can steal important information and change it. There are ways to minimise such access of the site.
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Directory of Testing Laboratories in India
Buy our one-of-a-kind guide to all industrial testing laboratories in India. Find the one most convenient for getting your products tested and certified. An invaluable compendium for all industrial units and exporters.
PP: 894, Hard Cover.
Price: Rs 900.
50% discount for members.
Handbook for Managing Export Payment Risks
If you are an exporter you simply cannot do without this unique publication which tells you how to manage payment and other risks arising from exports.
PP: 78.
Price: Rs 300.
50% discount for members.
Free Publications
FISME Policy Paper
FISME Policy Paper SME Exchanges in India: Review and Suggestions
Fertilizer quality control in India: Need for change
This monograph argues for a systemic change in fertiliser quality control. Essential reading for those in policy-making positions.
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FISME regularly receives monthly reports on the economies of various countries from their missions in India. These reports provide information on key economic parameters, trade related information and all news relevant for importers and exporters. In this edition you can take a look at reports on:
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Activities
Macro Metre
Domestic Digest
World Watch
Knowledge Store
...And A Lot More
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 Continuing its efforts to encourage adoption of innovation among MSMEs, FISME organized third Innovation Lab workshop at Hotel Capitol in Bangalore on September 27, 2012. The focus of the event – helping MSMEs compete with innovative ideas, was to familiarise MSMEs with the dynamics of innovation so that they can adopt innovation as a way of life. The workshop was third in the series and has gained quite popularity among MSMEs. The earlier workshops were held at Faridabad (Haryana) and Hyderabad (A.P.). Mr M C Dinesh, Central Executive Committee Member, FISME gave the welcome address. Special presentations were made by Mr Srinivasan K A, Co-founder, Amagi Media Labs Pvt. Ltd., Mr Vinod Raghavan Data Head (Karnataka & Andhra Pradesh), Airtel and Mr Shantanu Varma, Zonal Head, Tata Consultancy Services. More than 200 CEOs and managers of various SMEs across Karnataka attended the event. The star speaker of the series has been Mr David Wittenberg, CEO, the Innovation Workgroup.
 Ms Surbhi Mehta and Mr Kaustubh Sinha have won the National Contest on ‘Identification and Valuation of IPRs in MSMEs’ organized by FISME. The prize carried a cash reward of Rs one lakh. The Paper jointly authored by them has been adjudged best by the Jury which was chaired by Shri Ajay Shankar, IAS, Member Secretary, National Manufacturing Competitive Council (NMCC) on September 28, 2012. The other members of the jury included Dr Sujata Chaklanobis (DSIR), Mr Arvind Chopra (EBTC), Ms Gayatri Subramaniam (IICA), Mr Tarun Bansal (Sagacious Research) and Mr Anil Bhardwaj (FISME).
 Federation of Indian Micro and Small & Medium Enterprises has entered into a cooperation agreement with Federation of Association for Small & Medium Enterprises of Cambodia (FASMEC), focusing on policy of creating institutional linkages between member countries of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The agreement was signed on October 2, 2012 at Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia by Mr Arun K Aggrawal, FISME’s Central Executive Committee Member and Director of Vimal Organics Ltd., Ghaziabad.
 Following the gala opening of Indian Manufacturing Show-2012 by Mr Jagadish Shettar, honourable Chief Minister, Govt. of Karnataka and Mr Shih-Chao-Cho, honourable Vice Minister of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Govt. of Taiwan, FISME organised a technical seminar the next day on ‘Business Opportunities for MSMEs in Europe’ on September 28, 2012.
After the welcome address of Mr Mohan Suresh, Immediate Past President, FISME, the participating MSMEs were addressed by Ms Anna Liberg, Head, Swedish Trade Council, Bangalore, Ms Audrey D’ Souza, Regional Director, Indo-German Chamber of Commerce, Mr V Vijay Kumar, Chief Representative, Netherlands Business Support Office (NBSO), Chennai, Mr Lars Christiansen, Commercial Counsellor, Royal Danish Embassy, New Delhi, Mr Rolf Frei ,Consul General, Switzerland in Bangalore.
 The ‘India SME Forum’- 7th in series of forums being organized across the country with FISME as SME Partner of the campaign, was held in Kolkata on September 22, 2012 at the Oberoi Grand.
The Forum is focusing on two issues: Marketing & Branding and Innovative Financing. Former Executive Vice President of J. Walter Thomson (JWT) and media guru Nikhil Nehru explained MSMEs the fundamentals of branding. Other key speakers who spoke on ways to promote brands and about utilisation of Information Technology for enabling SMEs to reach at the level of corporates in terms of pricing and marketing included Mr Shashi Ravulapaty, Chief technology Officer, Reliance Capital and Mr Deepak Pandey, Executive Vice President SME-Vodafone.
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Will economic conditions improve during next quarter Oct-Dec 2012 in India?
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Macro Metre
Exports declined by 9.74% year-on-year to $22.3 billion in August due to the global economic slowdown. During April-August, the shipment dipped by 5.96 per cent to $119.97 billion from $127.5 billion in the same period last year, according to data released by commerce ministry recently. Imports during the month, too, slipped by 5.08% to $37.9 billion, leaving a trade deficit of $15.7 billion.  India's manufacturing activity growth in September held steady compared to August, due to pickup in export orders and output, a business survey showed recently. But an increase in inventories could hurt growth in the future. The HSBC manufacturing purchasing managers' index (PMI), which gauges the business activity of India's factories and not its utilities, held steady at 52.8 in September from 52.8 in August, which was a nine-month low.
Eight core industries grew at a slower pace of 2.1% in August, as against 3.8% in the same month last year due to negative growth in crude oil, natural gas, fertiliser and cement. During April-August this fiscal, the growth has slowed to 2.8%, from 5.5% in the year ago period, according to official data released recently. "The moderation in growth was on account of the negative growth in the production of natural gas, cement, fertilisers and crude oil, besides a decline in the growth rates of steel and electricity production," it said. The government recently said it expects the rupee to appreciate to around 50 against the dollar over the next three-four months on higher foreign inflows, a development that will help rein in subsidies and also check inflation. "The rupee has gone below 53 and that reduces the subsidy requirement. If rupee further strengthens, which we hope it will, with the steps the government is taking, we expect it could even touch 50 in the next 2-3 months or four months," economic affairs secretary Arvind Mayaram told reporters. He said the recent policy initiatives are expected to result in higher foreign exchange inflows — through the FII and the FDI channels — and ease the pressure on the rupee.  NSE recently launched operations of its new trading platform for SMEs, Emerge, with the first listing in this segment and said some more companies would follow. The platform was launched by Finance Minister P Chidambaram, along with Sebi Chairman U K Sinha, with the listing of Thejo Engineering - the first company to get listed in NSE's Emerge segment. Talking to reporters after the launch, NSE Managing Director Ravi Narain said that the exchange has been very careful in bringing in only good-quality companies on the platform and there was "quite a decent number of companies" interested in getting listed.
Stocks having debuted on the leading bourse BSE's SME platform this year seem to be generating significant interest from investors, as six of them have given positive returns since listing and the seventh one is trading with just a modest loss. BSE launched its SME platform for small and medium enterprises earlier this year in March and since then seven companies have got listed in this segment.
 Small and Medium Enterprises from India virtually swept the third FedEx International Business League awards, notching up 10 of the 12 finalists positions in the 6-nation contest that involved tough evaluation process of their performances. Indian SMEs stamped their dominance as FedEx opened its IBL contest for the first time to countries in neighbourhood including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait. Indian companies were chosen from the list of over 300 qualified nominations, while a company from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka made it to the two other positions.
Indian Bank has entered into a pact with National Small Industries Corporation (NSIC) to enhance its exposure to micro, small and medium enterprises. As per the pact, NSIC will sponsor MSME proposals, after due scrutiny, at regular intervals to various branches of Indian Bank all over the country. The arrangement is expected to provide more momentum to the growth of MSME advances of Indian Bank.
Finance Minister P Chidambaram recently asked public sector banks and rating agencies to handhold small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to enable them tap the capital market for raising funds. He was speaking after launching the dedicated SME platform 'Emerge' of National Stock Exchange (NSE). Currently seven companies are listed on the SME platform of BSE and one company (Thejo Engineering) got listed on NSE platform recently.
The finance minister P Chidambaram recently said given the huge number of the Medium, small and medium enterprises (MSME) in the country, at least a few thousand of these should be listed on the country's SME exchanges. "Given that there are over 3.11 crore MSMEs in the country, we should have at least a few thousand," Chidambaram said setting a lofty target for NSE EMERGE, which launched its operations with the listing of Thejo Engineering recently, and BSE's SME platform which has listed seven companies so far.
After developing a number of technologies for the societal and strategic areas, CSIR has now drawn up plans to focus on the micro, small and medium enterprises sector. To realise its goal, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) is in talks with the State Bank of India to pick up stake in a company it has established in Pune to help MSME sector to start spin-off companies using technologies developed by its chain of 37 laboratories.
After the new Infrastructure and Industrial Development policy, the Uttar Pradesh State Industrial Development Authority (UPSIDA) on recently announced a Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise Township (MSME Township) policy to promote private participation in developing various service sector-related industrial townships. A decision to this effect was taken during a meeting of the Board of Directors of UPSIDA, chaired by IID commissioner Anil K Gupta.
 Banks are finding lending to the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) an attractive proposition due to higher returns and easy recovery. Pent-up demand for funds from the MSME sector remains high and there is an opportunity for banks to accelerate growth in this segment, states a report by brokerage firm Motilal Oswal.
 The National Policy on Information Technology (IT) 2012, which aims to encourage adoption of information and communication technology (ICT) in key sectors, has been recently approved by the cabinet. "The Cabinet has recently approved the National Policy on Information Technology 2012," ministry of communications and information recently said in an official statement.
Comfort Comtrade Ltd recently became the 8th company to get listed on the BSE's SME platform. The company had come out with an initial public offering of 60 lakh equity shares of Rs 10 each aggregating to a total of Rs 6 crore early this month. The trading lot size is 10,000 equity shares.
While the clusters in south India are working seriously and bringing good results, the condition in Punjab is the contrary, said C K Mishra, joint secretary in the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME). Interacting with members of Offset Printers Association (OPA), he stated that in Punjab there are about 36-40 clusters in all which have been approved and all of them are till the soft intervention level only, i.e., up gradation of the machines, doing paper work for the clusters etc. When it comes to shifting of industry at the land acquired by creating all facilities, not even a single cluster has been able to do this in Punjab, he pointed out. It needs to be mentioned that industrialists had stated a few days ago that in Punjab they are not being allowed to set up a cluster on less than 50 acres of land and acquiring this huge chunk is not possible for them.
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There are business opportunities available for Indian companies in Canada. The interested candidates can check details.
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During the period September 15, 2012 to September 30, 2012 a total of 4 new MSMEs became members of FISME.
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How do you protect intellectual property rights (IPR) in Macau and China? Four experts on IP laws recently gave answers to this question at an event organized by the China IPR SME Helpdesk, which offers free support to European small and medium-sized enterprises (SME's), who want to deal with Chinese partners. According to Jennifer Lee from the China IPR SME Helpdesk, 75% of counterfeit items seized in Europe in 2010 came from China. Thus it is not surprising that "one third of our European companies stated IPR is a significant obstacle when doing business with mainland China."
