As the presentation started on, the “Economic Development through E-Governance& ICT as A Key Enabler of Export Competitiveness for SMEs”, a middle aged man has started addressing the gathering. It had an interesting start with the presentation of facts and figures before getting to the core topic. With some engaging statements he drew my complete attention,  “Small companies have every chance to work more creatively, to grow at a faster rate and to do multiple tasks”. He then posed some interesting questions to the audience, “How many of you have a website?” More than 90% hands were raised. Then he asked “How many of you are getting business through your website? Only 20% present of the audience raised their hands.  The presenter showcased websites that are selling from Doormats to Diamonds thorough their websites have turnovers running into crores, all of them being Indian companies. While talking about Information and Communication Technology’s (ICT) adoption in SMEs, he gave us an insight as to how most of the ICT applications were adopted for marketing (website, SEO, e brochures, SEM etc.). This was pleasing to hear, since I represented a company from the ICT sphere. Hearing this I could not help forecasting the potential for us by tapping these SME’s, is this possible with the support of the limited internet users? But what if the number of internet user double? Seemed like a very profitable venture. While commenting on the marketing and sales practices, he gave good insights which cleared my myths. The most interesting part of this presentation was the insights he gave on the general thoughts all of us have on selling a product or service, as most of us understand that, price and product play major roles in influencing our sales and marketing decision but it is another way round knowledge, information and responsiveness to customers play a key role in influencing decisions….

Finally all the presentations and talks ended at 9:30 and I found a long line for dinner, we grabbed our dinner and started conversations with the gathering.  As expected ICT was all everybody was talking about, largely most of them discussing how to implement ICT in their companies.  I joined in and shared my experience and introduced our business- iridium Interactive and our achievements as an organization.

Guys I feel that most of the SMEs are not leveraging ICT in their business. There are lot of SME who are not still aware of the benefits and applications of ICT. This presentation made me think about the huge potential of ICT in the domestic market.

About a year back iridium Interactive launched NASSCOM EMERGE blog for NASSCOM, a platform for SMEs to interact and share their thougts and ideas with each other and the organization. Nasscom Emerge recently celebrated its first birthday, completing a very successful and fruitful year overcoming a lot of opposition, resistance and hiccups. Read on to know more about the journey and what they have to say about Iridium.

August 3, 2007 is the day that the NASSCOM EMERGE blog first made an appearance in the Internet space, opening up a new platform for NASSCOM’s SME members to interact with each other and the organization.

It was a year ago, when overcoming significant internal opposition and initial hiccups, that the blog went live and received its very first hit. Not everyone was convinced about the relevance of the platform and even more circumspect about the kind of feedback it would generate about NASSCOM. However, the concerns were set aside as we were keen to share with our members the kind of exciting work we were doing within the “Emerging Companies” space. We wanted to keep them regularly updated about our activities and encourage them to share in their outcomes.
The idea was to reach out to our membership and gain vital feedback about the initiatives we had launched and how we can improve upon. While a step in this direction had already been made with our website, www.nasscom.in was inadequate and did not facilitate a two-way communication between NASSCOM and our members.
The blog was also an effort to create a platform for industry leaders to share their insights and experiences, to talk about what had worked for them and what had not and advise startups and entrepreneurs about how to leverage Best Practices to build success stories.
Having completed a year, we are delighted to share with you that the blog is an unmitigated hit. It has generated considerable excitement among our members and is being actively used by them to stay in touch with other companies and voice their opinions on a host of issues impacting SMEs. Leading industry practitioners have been interacting with other bloggers through this medium and guiding them about how they can achieve their goals. In less than a year, almost 153 opinions and articles have been posted on the site, with more than 223 comments in 21 categories, with atleast two to three updates going live every week. Over 30 people have been regularly contributing very valuable content to the blog and kick starting debate and discussion on contentious issues. The blog has been generating considerable traffic, with 65,000 page views every month.
The good news is that we are extending the frontiers of the blog even further. Besides providing a detailed view of events that are organized for Emerging Companies by NASSCOM, we have even begun posting video recordings of activities on the blog, so that viewers can get a first hand look and feel of the event. A major pat on NASSCOM’s back is the visibility that the blog is gaining within the market. Recently, India’s leading national business daily, The Economic Times carried an article on the blog and highlighted its unique features.
It’s been a great year and we can now look forward to even more exciting initiatives on the EMERGE community and the Web2.0 initiatives. Once again, we’d like to thank to all the contributors and our web partner –
iridium Interactive who have supported us in pursuing our objective to reach out to the membership community. We look forward to your continuous support and your best wishes for the future!
Warm regards,
Avinash Raghava
NASSCOM EMERGE Blog admin