Today was the second AGM of our association – ITSME Association at Hotel Savera. The association was formed by an energetic team of SME entrepreneurs from Chennai a few years back. The aim of the association is to provide a collective voice for the unique set of challenges that threaten the growth of Small and medium IT companies in India; learn from best practices and foster a community.
A new team of Executive Committee took charge today under the leadership of Mr V.Subramanian as President, Mr Ananth Seshan as Vice President, and Mrs Sarada Ramani as Treasurer. I wish them all the best in their efforts this year.
Today’s AGM was followed by a special business session with a talk by Mr P.W.C.Davidar IAS, IT Secretary to the Government of Tamilnadu. Mr Davidar gave a good talk on the efforts of the Tamilnadu government for the IT industry in general and in particular handling the present global meltdown. I was surprised to see a down-to-earth and pragmatic talk by a government bureaucrat. Few highlights of his talk:
- Govt. of Tamil Nadu with Elcot as the nodal agency for all E-Governance project / IT procurement has lowered the entry barrier to allow SMEs to easily participate in the bids. For example, it is now allowed for a Rs.30 Lakh turnover firm to bid for a Rs.10 Lakh tender and so on.
- Govt. is looking favourably at specialized firms with niche expertise (for each project) as an important criterion while awarding projects rather than blindly going for larger firms
- All tenders on the Elcot website are fully administered electronically, all bid openings can be accessed from anywhere in the world through the website
- Many of the SEZs in Tier-2, and Tier-3 cities in Tamilnadu getting good responses. The lands are now allocated in lots as low as 2 Acres. The government has realized that smaller allocation makes better use of the land and more employment
- Talked about the Citizen Computer Centres that Tamilnadu Govt. is setting in various parts of the state; for the success of those and to be self-sustaining economically it is important those franchisees have Entrepreneurial skills apart from the Technical prerequisites. Govt. has provided these centres with thousands of URLs of central & state government services that are now available over the web
- Five districts have been declared as e-districts, where all the government functions/communications will be in digital format and appropriate connectivity is being setup
- Due to global melt-down, there are thousands of floor spaces of IT offices are lying vacant in Chennai and other places, to help these be sold/leased and to provide a marketplace for them and for businesses from outside the state to set up business here easily, Elcot is building a web service to be released soon.
hi nice to see the information, what is the website for IT SME Association and Tamilnadu, like to know about more information about this association activities..
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dhanasekaran
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