Few Indian SMEs tap internet

Singapore (PTI): Just half a million of India's nearly 40 million small and medium business enterprises (SMBs) are leveraging the low-cost online medium to expand their consumer base, a top official from search giant Google said.

"India has about 40 million small and medium businesses (SMBs) of which only around 500,000 are online. This figure needs to rise if these entities want to reach their consumers at lowest cost and raise their profits," Google Asia Pacific President Karim Temsamani told reporters here. Today, internet is one of the most effective and cheapest mediums. It is the most profitable medium for SMBs which involves low advertising costs and covers as many customers as possible in the geographies of their choice, he added

"In India, Google has helped 200,000 such SMBs realise their potential online through our online advertising programme, AdWords," Temsamani said. Google's AdWords is an advertising platform which allows enterprises to show advertisements to individuals who type in keywords related to the products or services it offers. More businesses in Asian economies like India, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, etc are smaller in size compared to the Western economies and they are driving the change faster than the big companies, he said.

Commenting on the growth bottlenecks faced by SMBs in India, Temsamani said lack of infrastructure available for these businesses to have an online presence and use of advertising to enhance awareness of their offerings through the Internet, is a major issue. "Besides, infrastructure another factor, which can be considered as a major bottleneck is that India being a country of diverse languages and dialects lacks representation of such languages on the Internet and this also restricts the growth of these businesses," he added.