Apex industry chamber Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has announced a strategic partnership with Mastercard and National Institute for Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (ni-msme), an organistion of Ministry of MSME to launch the Digital Saksham Initiative - an expansive program designed to strengthen the competitiveness of MSMEs through digital knowhow and acceptance.
This collaboration aims to educate and train micro and small business owners and entrepreneurs enabling them to integrate into the digital economy and access credit, expand their market access, diversify their customer base, digitise their financial operations and solidify their supply chain. The ultimate objective is to unlock the full potential of MSMEs in India, measured by greater profitability and financial resilience.
"We need to make 50 per cent of the growth of the Indian economy come from the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector, raise its contribution to exports to 60 per cent and create five crore new jobs. To realise this potential- micro and small businesses need to become increasingly competitive in a changing marketplace," says Nitin Gadkari, Minister for MSMEs and Road Transport and Highways of India.
Speaking at the 17th Global SME Business Summit 2020, virtually, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), in partnership with the Ministry of MSME, Gadkari says he is pleased to note that the project Digital entails reaching out to more than 3 lakh MSMEs in 25 cities including rural and peri-urban clusters. "This will help drive systemic transformation and further accelerate achievements towards meeting our goals and ensure financial inclusion."
Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, CII, stated that the Digital Saksham initiative will focus on activating CII's vast membership base which includes 67 per cent of MSMEs to upskill specially the micro and small businesses. Through a combination of CII's broad footprint with 67 offices across the country and collaboration with ni-msme, CII will target key supply chains and use a cluster approach to deliver relevant skills know-how to the last mile entrepreneur. CII will also engage value chain anchors in the delivery of training through their supply chains. "We have an ambitious outreach target on creating awarness on digital financial literacy for 3 lakhs micro and small business who will attain the knowledge and access to personal finance strategies and digital financial instruments through this intervention which will spread across 25 cities in 7 states," he adds.
The implementation of the project is proposed from January 2021 and execution of trainings among the MSMEs from June 2021.