Entrepreneurship, growth and opportunities: A CII-KPMG Report

A strong entrepreneurial sector can provide significant boost to India’s economic growth. India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is estimated to grow from USD2 trillion to USD5 trillion by the year 2025 with significant contribution by the services segment (approx. 60 per cent) followed by manufacturing and agriculture. Keeping this in mind, the report titled Entrepreneurship, growth, and opportunities – 2017, put together by KPMG in India and Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), examines the current trends and key themes that impact the Enterprise segment in the country. The aim is to share insights with entrepreneurs to help build scalable business and leverage the significant growth opportunities the segment provides, over the next decade.

Entrepreneurs are required to focus on new trends and develop proper business models to achieve scalability in their business. Dynamically changing customer preferences and focus on innovation and digitisation is becoming key to develop successful and sustainable businesses.

Speaking about the report, Sanjay Aggarwal, Partner and Head, KPMG Enterprise, said, “Changing customer behaviour, technology and competition have transformed the landscape in which entrepreneurs operate. Hence, it is essential for entrepreneurs to continuously focus on improving their operations and building scalable and sustainable businesses. Further, they need to focus on investing in business performance improvements in quality and reliability. Adopting new technologies, making processes more efficient, continuous skill development and training and continuous innovation is key to success.”

Voicing his opinion on the entrepreneurship report, Sandeep Naolekar, Chairman – CII Entrepreneurship Conclave said, “Entrepreneurs today function in a highly volatile business and economic environment. The constantly changing customer behaviour and preferences have also driven many of them to innovate and scale their services and products and will continue to do so in the future as well. We hope this report serves as a ready reckoner and a tool that manifests critical advice for entrepreneurs to sustain themselves by adapting to both internal and external changes impacting their business.”

For managing scalable businesses and building excellence in operations, the report highlights the fact that in many entrepreneurial ventures, initial growth period is usually followed by a long period of stagnation. This happens not because of lack of opportunities but the inability of the entrepreneur to stabilise operations which is essential for converting the opportunities into profitable revenues. Imbibing practices such as continuous improvement as a short-term process focus, capability building as a long-term process focus, daily management as a short-term result focus can help create a method in the madness if one understands operations excellence. Additionally, it is important that while managing growth, entrepreneurs focus on a long-term horizon and recruit the right talent that can grow with the organisation. Effective organisation design and structured performance management systems can enhance the organisation’s culture and help in organisational growth.

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For innovation for entrepreneurs, the report suggests that innovation today is the near synonym of differentiation. Entrepreneurs do not fear challenging the norm and taking on larger companies head-on in their quest for growth. Innovation was conventionally Research and Development’s (R&D’s) prerogative, but its horizons have expanded from focus on radical changes to products and services. It now also manifests as new business models, novel customer acquisition methods, unique customer experience, alliances, and other avenues.

In case of digital marketing for entrepreneurs and MSMEs, the report recognises the fact that digital technology has opened a plethora of avenues for small business owners and entrepreneurs to reach out to its customers to create an impact, innovate and grow. However, between operating on a restricted budget, limited resources and growing revenue, entrepreneurs are faced with various challenges on marketing. As a first step, small business owners and entrepreneurs need to get started quickly on a digital bandwagon to reap its benefits. In this section, the effort is to capture key digital marketing trends and help entrepreneurs and Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) take on a digital journey with confidence.

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