Only 5 percent of SMEs in India have a website, reveals Google-FICCI report

FICCI, in partnership with Google recently released new research that showed the web makes a big impact on small to medium enterprises (SMEs) in India. The report, compiled and presented by Nathan Associates, showed that SMEs, who use the web, fare much better than those that do not. On an average, web-enabled SMEs boasted revenues 51 percent higher, 49 percent more profit, and customer bases 7 percent broader than their offline-only counterparts.

The study revealed significant opportunities both for India’s booming SME sector, where fewer than 5 percent of all businesses even maintain a web presence, and for India’s economy: small medium enterprises are critical to the economic growth in India, where 47 million SMEs employ about 100 million people and contribute more than 8 percent of India’s GDP. According to the report, only 51 percent of online SMBs use the web to advertise a mere 27 percent use it for e-commerce. But with 95 percent of businesses yet to even establish a website; India is poised for big gains as more small enterprises come online.