The National Stock Exchange (NSE) and the Andhra Pradesh government are collaborating to facilitate the growth of high potential small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the state so that they are enabled to scale up their businesses to compete globally, said Executive Director of SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India) S.V. Muralidhar Rao.
Participating in an awareness programme by NSE, SEBI and Andhra Pradesh Chamber of Commerce and Industry Federation (APCCIF) in the city on Tuesday, Muralidhar said the state government has laid major emphasis on SMEs, which is validated by the fact that the state has identified MSME as a key engine in its policy.
He said that the awareness programme was organised in the city as it has a large number of shipping, steel and chemical industries with ancillary units forming a large chunk of the SMEs. He said that these SMEs can utilise exchange platforms to raise capital for their business expansion.
Explaining the benefits of listing of SMEs in the NSE, Muralidhar said companies can access capital and future financing opportunities, liquidity for shareholders, facilitate acquisitions, employee stock option and last but not the least visibility and recognition of the company.
Noting that the SME sector has been instrumental in economic growth, job creation, wealth distribution and effective mobilisation of resources in Andhra Pradesh, he said that SMEs today are strongly restricted in accessing the capital that they require to grow and expand.
Speaking on the occasion, Chief Business Development of NSE, Ravi Varanasi said that the NSE SME platform — EMERGE — is positioned to bridge this gap by offering India’s emerging businesses a new and viable option for raising risk capital from a diversified set of investors in an efficient manner. Among 31 companies listed on NSE’s SME segment, 11 companies came up with IPOs of various sizes, he added. However, there is an urgent need to create awareness of the platform among the SMEs such that they can benefit from it, he said.
“At present we are talking to around 50 companies for listing in the SME segment. While many of them have progressed we expect, around 25 to get listed by end of this financial year,” Varanasi said.
APCCIF Vice-Chairman G. Sambasiva Rao said, “Indian SMEs represent a diverse asset class of emerging from both traditional sectors and new age economy sectors representing new and modern face of Indian entrepreneurs who have also demonstrated impressive management bandwidth by successfully managing high growth, cross border operations and complex inorganic transactions.”
He said that post bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, several SME clusters are coming in Visakhapatnam but are suffering from lack of funds. Awareness is the need of the hour for raising funds, which are required for the future expansion of industry for SMEs through NSE for their own advantage, he added.
Source : The Times of India
