Ludhiana's textile entrepreneurs introspect, invest in value addition and adopt energy-saving technology.

Innovation is the name of the game

Business Standard

Many small units in Tamil Nadu have shut shop or are heavily in debt, but others are still positive about their prospects.

Down but not out

The crux of the problem is that the extent of government help for cooperatives is limited to purchase of their output.

Wanted: Credit for weavers

The capital market regulator is expected to soon issue final guidelines for setting up a trading platform exclusively for SMEs.

An exchange of their own

Online search marketing allows small companies to target specific customer segments in a focused way, without wasting resources.

Online advertising is the new mantra

Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), which constitute the backbone of the industrial and services sector in India, are most vulnerable to any downturn in demand. Thanks to the global financial crisis, units in this sector have got ample taste of this over the past year.

Back from the brink

Projects worth over Rs 70,000 crore to upgrade technology have been kickstarted in the country.

Ficci to seek quota for small units in e-governance

The toll-free helpline for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), recently launched by the Central government to help them deal with problems relating to taxation, laws, policies and the like, has been welcomed by the SMEs, but entrepreneurs are still unclear as to how exactly it will benefit them.

SMEs unclear about how helpline will work

Vijaya Kumari, a widow from Nagapattinam, earned her living by doing other people&rsquo;s laundry. That was till the December 2004 tsunami changed the tide. Her business was badly affected.

Cosmos Ignite lights up lives with solar lanterns

Patiala, the princely city of Punjab, has thousands of families who have been engaged in hand embroidery for generations. A business that extends employment to over 2 lakh persons (including traders, artisans, wholesalers and retailers) and registers transactions of over Rs 100 crore per year, has been flourishing on its own, without state government intervention.However, due to the lack of concerted effort from any agency, the business has remained highly unorganised, leading to the exploitation of labour.

Patiala embroidery units' artisans an exploited lot

Let us for the moment ignore whether these are good times or bad times for buying art.

The hidden cost that hurts

Men&rsquo;s fashion will no longer be the neglected child of the Indian fashion world. While women&rsquo;s fashion has almost two events every year, men&rsquo;s fashion shows are showcased on the periphery. All this will soon change with the announcement of the Van Heusen Men&rsquo;s Week by Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI) in September this year.

FDCI announces Van Heusen Men's week

Steel companies have increased prices of flat steel, used by automobile and consumer durable sectors, by Rs 500-1,000 a tonne, but reduced prices of long steel, used primarily in the construction sector, by Rs 500-2,000 a tonne.

Prices of flat steel hiked, long products slashed

Difficulties in raising finance for new investments may soon be a thing of the past for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), since the Delhi Stock Exchange Limited is gearing up to register MSMEs, to enable them to mobilise funds from the capital market.

DSE  to re-open in Nov, offer platform for MSMEs

a) The procedure of filing returns for showing export obligation.

'DEPB Scrips can be used to pay duty on imports'

Despite the end-consumer being cushioned from the adverse effects of high international prices of auto LPG (ALPG), auto LPG players in India consider setting up new retail outlets in urban markets unviable. The reasons are the high cost of land and the stringent on- and off-site safety-distance norms laid down by the statutory authorities.

Urban retail outlets unviable for ALPG players

In order to tackle economic deprivation and social isolation that Dalits face, the Central government plans to recognise Dalit villages in different parts of the country and make them self-dependent. A handful of villages have already been identified in Uttarakhand and seven other states for this purpose.

Centre plans model villages for Dalits

Over the past 12 months, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) learnt how to deal with the downturn. Now, with the economy showing the first signs of recovery, they are learning how to seize the opportunity to develop growth momentum once again. Karnataka&rsquo;s SMEs are making both individual and industry-level efforts towards this goal.

Skill building planned for small units in Karnataka

A scarcity of rectified spirit in West Bengal (WB) has brought the bottling operations of organised sector country liquor manufacturers to a halt, disrupting distribution through licensed retail vendors. The shortage was triggered by the state government&rsquo;s delay in determining the price of rectified spirit.

Rectified spirit shortage hits WB country liquor trade

With small and medium enterprises&rsquo; (SMEs) need for efficient logistics growing, Aparna BPO Services Ltd, a logistics BPO services provider, has decided to enter the warehousing segment primarily meant for auto-ancillary and other SMEs in and around Pune.

Pune BPO sets up warehouse for auto parts makers

Deepak Pahwa, Managing Director of Pahwa Enterprises, India&rsquo;s largest private sector SME in the HVAC&amp;R (heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration) industry, tells Business Standard that some of his key customers are pharma units, and since dehumidification machines are at the heart of pharma units, his company was unaffected by the downturn.

'We have filed a world patent for a new energy-saving technology'

SME: Find all the latest news on Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in India. Explore more for the top headlines about SME sector on Business Standard.

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