Yogesh Dixit, head – SME Ratings, CRISIL, tells Aparna S of CIOL that SME industry needs complete support from the government and why organizations must maintain the discipline of rating themselves every year
BANAGLORE. INDIA:
Strengthening relationship with government agencies and banks will be the
focus of CRISILthis year. This is very much in accordance with the company's principle: To help market
perform well.
"SME organizations have been at a serious disadvantage of not receiving the right information and advice on good business practices, governance and finance related matters. Through the ratings the organizations will be at a greater advantage. This is very important because the SME segment is a significant contributor to the development of the
Indian economy, to the exports and the GDP," says Yogesh Dixit, head – SME Ratings, CRISIL.
With core activities being analysis and research, CRISIL has indeed filled in a huge requirement gap in the market. CRISIL will also focus on the other schemes supported by the government under the ministry of MSME like performance capability and credit rating scheme, he says.
This apart, it will also concentrate on achieving 15,000 ratings for the year which is a 50% increase from the current number of ratings.
Beaming with confidence that CRISIL has built the scalability to handle such a huge volume of ratings, Yogesh more number of organizations need to get themselves rated since it will be beneficial to them. The organizations which get themselves rated should also maintain the discipline of rating themselves every year.
Yogesh, who has been with CRISIL for over six years, doesn't mince words in saying that the SME industry needs more support from the government.
As a veteran in the industry, he has worked with NABARD, SIDBI, Credit Guarantee Fund, SBI Capital Markets and knows what's best in the market. So, setting his priorities right, he wants to build a business development team, a rating
model and operations.
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Since its establishment in 1987, CRISIL has highly diversified activities with key focus areas being providing rating businesses to entrepreneurs, SMEs, business of off-shoring R&D based services and building rating models for banks where they do internal rating of their customers. However, it began to offer ratings for MSME in 2005. CRISIL currently has a working relationship with 37 banks and has a strong focus on SME development.
The objective of developing SME ratings was to bring to market more information on the SME segment. This also ensured the development of a systematic rating of SME organizations. This largely aided the companies in getting better financing, better credit facilities, proposals reaching the banks at shorter cycles.
"SMEs should make use of the government subsidies and use the ratings to the full extent
for their own benefit," Yogesh signed off.
