Majority of Indian SMEs want to make significant investments in technology over the next three years.
71 percent SMEs said that they are developing and implementing innovation to business models, products and services and ways of working.
62 percent are prioritizing on quickly responding to changing business demands. 75 percent of Indian SMEs plan to use more scalable technology, like cloud based solutions in the next three years, said American Express Global SME Pulse 2017.
Indian SMEs are confident about their ability to deliver increased revenues and profitability. 76 percent of the Indian SMEs expect revenue growth of at least 4 percent in 2017. Indian SMEs are similarly upbeat with 45 percent forecasting a profit of 8 percent per annum by 2020. This is in excess of the global findings which show 27 percent of SMEs forecasting net profits of 8 percent.
While SMEs in India are optimistic about the economy and their own business, they cite domestic policies, uncertain laws and regulations as major concerns over the next year.
Indian SMEs expressed that existing working capital (at 88 percent) and bank loans (at 77 percent) are the most readily available; whereas the funds they actually put to use are bank loans (at 62 percent) and existing working capital (at 49 percent).
Over the next year, Indian SMEs plan to source funds through public equity markets (at 50 percent) and bank loans (at 46 percent). In order to streamline their future business financing options, Indian SMEs ranked flexible lending and repayment options (at 37 percent) as the most important factor, and high interest rates (at 49 percent) as the biggest pain point when applying for business finance.
Indian SMEs are focusing on growth and expansion to improve their financial performance. 38 percent of Indian SMEs feel that expansion into new domestic market segments will be a top priority for their business over the next three years. They are pushing for sales growth with over 35 percent looking to grow their current market share.
37 percent of Indian SMEs said they will be looking at increasing operational efficiency as another key priority for driving financial performance.