This blog is entirely inspired by my blogging guru Gautam Ghosh's posting trying to list out Small and Medium Management Consulting Firms in India -disregarding that some of them are potential competition to him-catering to the SME (small & medium enterprises) if they aren't already :-)!

Most people do not realise the SMEs account for almost 90% of industrial units in India and 40% of value addition in the manufacturing sector. They contribute 35% to India’s merchandise exports. I recall remember reading that this sector-also employs a huge amount of workforce & rarely gets the visibility of being the most among integral players in India’s economic growth story.

There are more than 350 clusters in India- eg electric fans in Calcutta, sewing machines in Ludhiana, stationery diesel engines in Rajkot ( these come first to my mind, as I was a Shriram group employee before my recruiter avataar!!), Jalandhar sports goods, Coimbatore agricultural pumps, Gurgaon auto courtesy Maruti, Tiruppur for textiles....etc!

Most of these firms-are run by technocrats-and operate from tight financial budgets-that they really do not have the luxury to afford full time HR professionals- and it is here the consulting fraternity can certainly add value.

Indian SME are amongst the most dominant recruiters the BRIC countries- considering the increasing IT spend!

Incidentally, a few months ago, I attended a meeting hosted by ICICI and IBM -to launch a project of IFC (World Bank group) SME Toolkit .The SME Toolkit India offers a wide range of how-to articles, business forms, free business software, online training, self-assessment exercises, quizzes, and resources to help entrepreneurs, business owners, and managers in India to start, finance, formalize, and grow their businesses.

As a recruiter, I am convinced some of the SMEs can tap into innovative ways of hiring

• retired professionals who want to have a more relaxed number of hours. Imagine the wealth of experience-even at say 20hrs a week ?
• temporary or small term projects to design and implement special initiatives-utilising some flexitime employees
• working closely with MBA/Engineering colleges and get interns to handle short-term projects.

In a podcast I recently heard, there are a lot of SMEs in US -who have tapped the opportunity of engaging 'interim' managers ('rightsized' from ironically large corporates-even as they were looking for new employment opportunities -which aren't easy to come by-considering the slow down!)-and it has been a win-win for all concerned.

With increasing attention from banks, MNC rating organisations, and SEBI approved SME exchangeSEBI approved stock exchnage, we could be seeing a lot more SME's going global??

Are we consultants..guilty for looking at the low lying fruit-and blissfully unaware of the burgeoning potential of the perhaps the largest SME market in the world ( considering companies in China are largely driven by government??)

GG, cheer up- what we are looking at -is only the tip of the iceberg. The market is simply much bigger than what all of us can probably do justice to!!

By the way, here is another link of SME consultants..though extending beyond HR and placements HR and placements, lol.