The manufacturing sector has executed a significant task in India’s economic progress generating significant employment through enterprise and innovation. Existence of global competition has laid down various hardships for SMEs who will now be required to skilfully utilize their potential within.

Almost all the government strategies up till now have focused on development of physical infrastructure, isolated enhancement of R&D, skills, ICTs and tend to be ‘supply driven’ instead of looking out for building capacity and competency.
Microsoft, along with the NMCC and other stake holders, will now address this gap through “Project Vikas”- a five year project to make SMEs more competitive. This devout and scalable multi-divisional program is projected to harness skills and build capacity cover knowledge creation and dissemination, and enable linkages in the cluster ecosystem.

It is a symbol of an enduring commitment by Microsoft India to entrench “Made in India” for the Indian SME cluster as a global brand to be reckoned with.

A high ICT penetration and utilization has been marked as the chief ingredient for global competitiveness by many studies.
In contrast to the large manufacturing units, the SMEs are restricted beneficiaries from this field that has led to a “competitiveness gap” among them. The SME sector needs to be concrete about adopting ICT and realize its manifold benefits in order to make India grow as an economy.

Realizing the potential of IT, Microsoft has worked intently with the Government, industry, academia and the local developer communities to utilize the technology to its maximum and head-off towards India’s goals.