Why E-commerce is a unique solution to connect Small and Medium Enterperises (SME's) in today's technologically advanced world

Small and Medium Enterprises has been the backbone of the Indian economy since quite a while. It has stepped out in a totally new era of development after the Digital India launch by PM Narendra Modi.

At present SMEs are contributing almost 37.54 percent to the economy as a sector and it also provides employment to nearly 805.54 lakh of people according to a written reply in the parliament by Union Minister (MSME) Kalraj Mishra, last year. Unfortunately this sector has been advancing on years of ignorance and lack of enough options to seek further development within this sector of industry.

Keeping the same thought in mind, Jayant Mehrotra, Co-Founder of My Trade Box (MTB), India's fist assisted bulk buying e-commerce platform has come up with a unique concept to connect small and medium enterprises (SMEs) like e-commerce business on a single platform so that they can also contribute in a major way to the Indian economy.

MTB has both business to customers (B2C) and business to business (B2B) platform. While the first one is an online platform and the second one connects directly small and medium enterprises (SMEs). For doing so, MTB has tied-up with the local retailers and vendors for local kiosks that will be managed by MTB. By this single initiative, anyone, be it small shopkeepers, vendors or local retailers, can register themselves with MTB and sell their products online on the MTB portal.

This unique initiative by Jayant Mehrotra is helping small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to connect themselves on a single digital platform and enable them to be part of Indian economy as a major contributor.

Why connecting SMEs on single digital platform is of much importance? There are various reasons for the same:

By connecting SMEs, it will help in rapid industrialization of rural areas especially smaller towns and tier 2, tier 3 cities. It will provide employment to more people as of now 18 millions. It will boost-up rural manufacturing units as well in various ways.

The SMEs industry has contributed to (37 percent of GDP in 2014-15 according to Indian Government Report) whereas according to the World Bank Report it is 33 percent and emerged as a 45 percent of nation's industrial output and 40 percent of total exports. The SMEs are adding close to 1.3 million jobs every year.

By adopting e-commerce, SMEs sector will be able to emerge itself in achieving significant advantages such as access to new market like online marketplace, reach to a wider and various range of customers, can increase their revenue and margins. It will also help in cost saving, better communication and customer support. In short, it will help them to win the customer trust and make a market base for the SMEs sector.

Therefore, we can justifiably say that e-commerce is one of the most unique solution to connect small and medium enterprises. Our government's initiative such as Make in India, digital and Skill India programmes which are aimed to strengthen the SMEs and explore the opportunities in e-commerce will be more successful with this unique initiative to connect SMEs with e-commerce.