Year 2020 and first half of 2021 have been the adverse period for the world. Year 2022 shall be a year of redefining everything. The 2-years of lockdown has taught us a new way of living. Few key themes which will evolve more and change the future are – virtual working, digital banking, increased health consciousness, shorter/economical holidays, savings, digital currency and so on.
The Union Budget has magnified the Digital India vision and importance of technology in all focus areas like infrastructure and skills. MSME eco-system shall get a good boost given the increased focus in developing the sector since last two years.
The extension of ECLGS to March 2023 will ensure to fill the much-needed credit gap and MSMEs will get sufficient time and funding to carry on their functions smoothly. Revamping of the CTGMSE scheme will help the micro sector, who could not avail ECLGS earlier because they did not have existing credit outstanding, which was the basic requirement for availing ECLGS.
The banking sector will also improve because of less delinquencies on account of good early warning systems supported by the evolving digital eco-system.
Interlinking of Udyam, e-Shram, National Career Service (NCS), and Atmanirbhar Skilled Employee-Employer Mapping (ASEEM) widens the scope for services related to credit facilitation, skilling, and recruitment. India’s MSMEs would benefit greatly by embracing technology.
Technology adaption in MSME will help scale up their operations. Technologies such as Artificial Intelligence can take care of the time-consuming administrative tasks so that businesses can focus more on the crucial and strategic work. With changing market dynamics and market competition, every organisation needs to make a strong brand position in their respective market.
In the current digital era, without appropriate use of digital technologies and social media strategies, it is difficult to sustain and grow. Digitization will enable MSMEs to grow faster with digital payments & in turn this will lessen the credit burden.
Digital acceptance of invoices is one of the few good steps in digitizing the value chain. Given the rapid rise of digital payments it was critical to develop digital infrastructure to support digital banking, which has enormous potential.
We estimate that enhanced access to funds, clusterisation of MSMEs and ease of doing business initiative coupled with the new fintech enablers for MSME, shall bring huge uptick in the sector.
(The writer is CPO, AjvaFintech--end-to-end solutions provider of MSME services)
