PIA Ensures Strength To Its Members For Sustaining In The Changing Market
In this edition of Business Beyond 2020 we got the opportunity to interact with Mr. Vijay Kumar Makal, the Secretary of PIA, to understand how the organisations in Peenya are gearing up to manage their business in and beyond 2020.
Business Beyond 2020 is a series conducted by CEO BottomLine to understand the thought process of the existing MSME and SME leaders and new entrants on how they will manage their business beyond 2020.
Started in the 1978, PIA (Peenya Indutrial Association) is mainly an engineering hub catering to Defence, Electrical industries, and others. There are a lot of organisations belonging to the garment industry as well in Peenya. It comprises of all micro, small, medium and large scale industries of which around 8,500 are small scale organisations. “PIA is the largest industrial estate in Southeast Asia and here we can manufacture things ranging right from pin to plane,” says Mr. Makal with pride.
The key activities in PIA include awareness programs for its members. Whenever the government formulates new policies and reforms, the Association dissipates the same among the team members. “We conduct multiple awareness sessions, workshops, seminars in order to enhance our member’s managerial skills and help them upgrade technologically in terms of imparting soft skills and others. The motto of our association is that our members should be strong enough to sustain the changing scenarios in the market,” adds Mr. Makal.
How is PIA prepping up its members for managing business beyond 2020?
“Now, industries are going towards recession. If anything goes wrong in the market large scale industries, MNCs survive because they will be having contingency plans; they make provision to overcome such tide. But in SMEs, they don’t make any provision because most of them are not visionaries, and they don’t even have forward thinking attitude. A lot of SMEs face financial crunch because the Financial Institutions don’t give credit, need based finance to the SMEs. Though being an Association and the facilitator, we arrange for funds for these organisations. We also create a lot of awareness programs and ask them to not get disheartened, and assure them that the future is very bright. We conduct sessions on digitalisation, because SMEs mainly bank on the existing markets in and around Peenya and Bangalore. Exports are not much in Peenya, though a few businesses are doing. But, we want all SMEs to step-up and reach to a particular level. We are asking them to get empowered with many managerial skills, get access to the digitalised world to be able to capture any market across the world,” says Mr. Makal.
Predicting the future of MSMEs and SMEs
“The order passed by the government on BS6, has created a lot of turmoil and disturbance within the auto industry. But, 1st April 2020 onwards we are hoping that all 4-wheeler production will begin in full-fledged manner. So, once the four wheeler production begins, then probably the auto sector will improve and engineering industry will also flourish, of course it is a matter of time. Once the industrial production increases or flourishes even the other sectors like real estate which is currently not doing well, will improve because all are interconnected. Hence, after April or May 2020, we hope to find some bright months and years ahead,” shares Mr. Makal.
An advice to the MSME and SME Entrepreneurs
I want them to be exposed to the digitalised world. At least they should operate their emails on a day-to-day basis. They should make use of the data available in the digitalised world,” concludes Mr. Makal.
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