Innovation matters for the growth of the Indian MSME sector! With the opening of the Indian economy and increasing globalization, a growing number of MSMEs face tough competition on international markets. Increasing resource prices or higher costs of imports additionally drive the development of new solutions. However, to remain competitive, Indian MSMEs need more than innovative products alone: The pressure for innovation in processes, business models and management to improve productivity and significantly lower costs, has increased in recent years. New initiatives by the Government of India support enterprises to gain competitive edge and to strengthen their innovation competencies. With the announcement of 2010 – 2020 as the “Decade of Innovation” and the establishment of the National Innovation Council (NInC) the Indian Prime Minister has put innovation promotion in the centre of private sector development in India. Together with our partners the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MoMSME) and Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), GIZ over the past three years has piloted many initiatives to contribute to an innovation enabling business environment. We are therefore happy to announce that in 2014 GIZ and the Ministry of MSME under framework of Indo-German bilateral cooperation funded by the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) will start a new project that seeks to enhance the innovation capacity of Indian MSMEs and create a functional MSME Innovation eco-system in India. Complementing these efforts, GIZ together with SIDBI will now increasingly work towards increasing the access to risk capital for innovative enterprises and start ups.
File Name: msme-umbrella-programme