Business Today

small, vulnerable but beautiful

WHILE BIG companies, typically listed at the bourses and actively followed by investors, lenders and myriad analysts, tend to hog the limelight in the business press, the small and medium Enterprises (SMEs) play an immensely important role in industry. Every big company needs suppliers, vendors and distributors – many of whom are small- or medium-sized enterprises. Consider this: Almost 45 per cent of manufacturing output in the country can be credited to SMEs, as well as 40 per cent of exports. If you included the micro industries as well, at last count the number of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) added up to almost 63 million, employing over 111 million people. Together the MSME sector accounted for close to 28 per cent of India’s GDP. Traditionally, the entire MSME universe…

business today

http://www.businesstoday.in Editor-in-Chief: Aroon Purie Group Editorial Director: Raj Chengappa Editor: Prosenjit Datta Group Creative Editor: Nilanjan Das Group Photo Editor: Bandeep Singh Executive Editor: Anand Adhikari Deputy Editor: Naveen Kumar (Money Today) SPECIAL PROJECTS AND EVENTS Senior Editor: Anup Jayaram CORRESPONDENTS Senior Editors: P.B. Jayakumar, Nevin John, Goutam Das, Ajita Shashidhar, Joe C. Mathew, E. Kumar Sharma, Anilesh Mahajan Senior Associate Editors: Dipak Mondal, Manu Kaushik, Sumant Banerji Associate Editor: Nidhi Singal Assistant Editors: Sonal Khetarpal, Rukmini Rao, Renu Yadav (Money Today) RESEARCH Principal Research Analysts: Niti Kiran, Shivani Sharma COPY DESK Senior Editor: Mahesh Jagota Senior Associate Editor: Kaveri Nandan Associate Editor: Sanghamitra Mandal Chief Copy Editor: Gadadhar Padhy Copy Editor: Aprajita Sharma PHOTOGRAPHY Photo Editor: Reuben Singh Deputy Chief Photographers: Shekhar Ghosh, Rachit Goswami Senior Photo Researcher: Sudhansh Sharma ART Assistant Creative Editor: Safia Zahid Deputy Art Director: Amit Sharma Associate Art Director: Ajay Thakuri Assistant Art Director: Raj Verma Designer: Rajesh Singh Adhikari PRODUCTION Chief of Production: Harish Aggarwal Senior Production Coordinators:…

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STAY CONNECTED WITH US ON www.facebook.com/BusinessToday@BT_ Telcos Struggle to Make Money as DoT Fines Pile Up Recent events involving DoT have sparked debate over its overbearing methods of handling the telecom sector and, in a way, destroying it rather than promoting it businesstoday.in/telecomsector-fine Why India Shouldn’t Ignore RCEP Free Trade Mega Deal Are mega FTAs beneficial for Indian economy? Majority of Indian industry may say no, but a research policy paper attempts to offer a contrarian view businesstoday.in/economy-fta NEWS What Ails the CBI? It’s More Than Political Intervention Lack of clearly demarcated spheres of functioning and overlapping areas of influence severely compromise the integrity and efficacy of the institution, says CBI chief R.K. Shukla businesstoday.in/politicalintervention-cbi Is LIC Emerging As Lender of Last Resort for the Battered NBFC Sector? The insurance giant is lending a helping hand when the RBI makes it clear that…

household debt trap

6.6% Net financial savings as % of GDP, down from 7.2 per cent seven years ago A YOUNG WORKFORCE and growing credit culture are shrinking households’ financial savings. Be it credit cards, personal loans or buying a house or car, youngsters prefer taking debt. Banks, housing finance companies and NBFCs are happy to oblige. This leads to rising financial liabilities, which, as a share of GDP, have moved up from 3.3 per cent to 4.3 per cent over the last seven years. During the period, net financial savings fell from 7.2 per cent to 6.6 per cent. Banks deposit growth has declined to 10-12 per cent from 20 per cent-plus two decades ago. These trends are settled now as there is a big change in investment, spending and savings behaviour of…

raining it jobs

INDIAN IT SERVICES companies sounded their positive best in hiring numbers at the end of the first quarter of FY2019/20. Top companies, put together, recorded over 50 per cent increase in hiring compared to the same period last year. TCS added 12,356 employees, their highest for the quarter in five years, and said it had made 30,000 job offers for the year. Wipro, too, added 6,000 people and Infosys added a little less than 1,000 but was strengthening its onshore hiring with over 10,000 people in the US and 2,000 more, to be hired globally. Although most companies have emphasised extensive training to make new hires project deployable at the earliest, the hiring is also indicative of the depth of pipeline the companies are targeting. The hiring numbers consist of…

desperate moves

THE SIGNS of an imminent economic slowdown are evident not just because there is a dip in auto sales. The FMCG sector is also showing signs of desperation. According to a study by Elara Securities, FMCG companies, over the past year, are dumping their stock with distributors and retailers to report a higher volume growth. The report estimates that the growth fuelled by this dumping was in the region of 8 per cent last year. This has led to heavy undercutting in the market across brands. The average closing stock at the distributor level has gone up from 10 days to 25 days, while retailer credit has increased by 15 days to 25.…