Service portal for SMEs

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI, JULY 1. The TANSTIA-FNF Service Centre (TFSC), established jointly by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation of Germany and the Tamil Nadu Small and Tiny Industries Association, has launched a service portal for the benefit of small and medium enterprises in India.

The portal, www.thesme-link.com, offers unlimited access to participants for a minimum subscription fee, giving them details of the most important trade leads, commodity pricing, events calendar, industry news, answers to questions, policy watch and library service (TFSC library catalogue).

It also provides exclusive downloadable access services by way of information on market indicators, project reports, country profiles, online catalogues, business connections, import-export databank and course materials for a price for each access. Besides, the portal offers links to web sites of various export promotion councils (EPCs) and commodity boards.

The ten-year-old TFSC, whose own URL is www.tanstiafnf.com and which has been hitherto rendering various services such as consultancy and training programmes to SMEs at its premises at Guindy in the city, has, through the new portal, extended the range and benefit of its activities to SMEs all over the country.

Inaugurating the thesme-link.com at a function on Wednesday, Mr. N. Murugan, Secretary, Small Industries, Government of Tamil Nadu, said his department's own pages on the government web site (www.tn.gov.in) provided application forms for SSI registration and for loans from the Tamilnadu Industrial Investment Corporation (TIIC), besides the Citizen's Charter adopted by the department. Entrepreneurs' could access the forms even from browsing centres, he pointed out.

Mr. Siegfried Herzog, Project Director, FNF, New Delhi, said combining the enormous potential of the information technology (IT) revolution with the small industry sector's ``inherent advantages'' like flexibility, closeness to the customer and scope for fast decision-making would enable SSIs to maintain their competitiveness in the globalised economic scenario. Any programme of assistance to SSIs should, like the portal, aim at strengthening their capacity for self-help, he added.

Ms. K. Saraswathi, Director, TFSC, said more value added services such as training packages in export management and quality management and on-line consultancy services would be added to the new portal in the months ahead.

Dr. R. Natarajan, Director, IIT Chennai, said the portal would help remove some of the barriers to innovation like focus on technologies alien to a majority of the population, ideological hang-ups and rote learning.

Mr. A. S. Kannan, President, TACT, a tiny and cottage sector industries association, and member of the State legislature, suggested to the Service Centre to include in the SME portal details of support of various kinds extended by governments in other countries to their small and medium industries.

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