Chandigarh: To empower small and medium businesses, Google India showcased a range of programs and products for the SMBs through which they can leverage the power of internet and technology to become successful.

At an event held in the city on May 25, Google announced the North region winners of SMB Heroes 2017, a nationwide program to showcase and celebrate small and medium businesses that have embraced the internet to power their growth. Entries from as many as 142 cities were received for the award.

The three winners from the North region were: Farida Gupta for Business Innovation through Digital; Pen Pundit for Woman Business Leader; and TabLab for Impacting Change through Digital.

The winners will now contest in the national finals to be held in Delhi later in 2017.

Felicitating the winners, Google Director – Marketing Solutions, Shalini Girish said, “India now has 400 million internet users, and this has had a transformational impact on how people consume information, connect with one another and find businesses. We see the internet as a great democratising force that breaks down barriers of language and location. The business journeys of the SMB Heroes winners are a great testament to this, as each of them have leveraged technology to address challenges and grow their businesses.”

Emphasising the need to focus on building the technology capabilities of Indian SMBs, Google shared findings from a joint research study with KPMG titled ‘Impact of Internet and digitisation on SMBs in India’. The study reiterates that 68 per cent of the 51 million Indian SMBs are offline; and, digitally engaged SMBs grow twice as fast compared to offline SMBs.

According to the report, digitally-engaged businesses are able to grow their customer base significantly with 52 per cent catering to customers beyond their home city versus only 29 per cent offline.

Highlighting the macro-economic impact of the internet, the research found that rising penetration and greater uptake for digital by SMBs could help increase their contribution to India’s GDP by 10 percentage points, taking it up to 46-48 per cent by 2020. The report cites the lack of understanding of the benefits of digital technologies and technical skills as the essential reasons for being offline.

Recognising the need to address this gap, Google India commenced Digital Unlocked — an online, offline and mobile training program to empower thousands of Indian SMBs with essential digital skills.

On May 25, Google India hosted a training workshop in Chandigarh, where over 60 local small businesses were certified on a range of topics including building a digital campaign and using web analytics, among others.

The Digital Unlocked program has been designed keeping the varied learning needs of the millions of businesses in India. The offline training is being conducted in partnership with FICCI and over the next three years, 5,000 workshops will be held across 40 Indian cities.

The online training comprises a set of 90 self-paced video tutorials, curated specifically for India and is available free of charge. The tutorials cover a comprehensive set of topics ranging from building a web presence and driving online growth to reaching customers over mobile and video.

The training are certified by Google, Indian School of Business and FICCI. Since its launch in January 2017, over 13,000 businesses are now certified.

Further, for India’s mobile-first audience, Google has recently launched, Primer- a free mobile app designed to teach digital marketing skills in a quick, easy and interactive way. It is available for download through the Google play and iOS store. Primer also works offline and is available in English and Hindi with Tamil, Telugu and Marathi versions coming shortly. In the last few months, Primer has been downloaded over 1.5 million times.

At the event, Google also previewed “My Business Website” – aimed at equipping the vast majority of small businesses with a simple way to start their digital journey by creating a free, mobile optimized website – easily and instantly. Available for Google My Business users later in the year, this new feature will provide simple, templated, editable websites for small businesses created from their data and photos on Google Maps. My Business Website will be available in English, Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Kannada, and Malayalam. Over 120,000 Indian businesses are now part of the pilot rollout program.

Source: Economic Times