SME rankings make me smile

     Today going through the headlines of the frontpage article of a national daily,something made me smile.
It read "Ahmedabad No.1 among 100 cities for small & medium enterprise". It was not part of the once too often regional jingoism we come across. It was a well established fact published by none other than E&Y.

Here are the rankings:
1. Ahmedabad
2. Banglore
3. Mumbai
4. Hyderabad
5. Delhi
6. Chennai
7. Surat
8. Faridabad
9. Jaipur
10 Gurgaon

Well its not that I liked the article just because it praised Ahmedabad.
The city where I was brought up, did my schooling and completed my under grads.
It was because I was linked with almost all of the cities......and the one city left out...gave me a SIGN......

  As I said earlier, I did my schooling from Ahmedabad, my Alma mater was St.Xavier's High School.
I could see that people here were enterprising right from childhood, I guess it was in their blood.Kids as young as 10 would start their book club, not only foster their own learning, but also make a quick buck!I did my engineering from L.D. Engineering college, one of the oldest,world renown, government engineering college, a part of the Gujarat University.Now this university did not just have a prestigious Engineering college, but also had a multitude of technical graduation courses, the B.Scs & the ITIs among other courses.
You won't imagine college passouts, rather guys who have not even passed out of college setup their own small scale industires. Small plants manufacturing industrial goods, machinery, chemicals, Engineering equipments and God knows what not. I guess they start off young and their backgrounds give them a risk taking appetite. Not to mention the general honesty and work ethic of Gujaratis.

 When I mention Gujarati, I would mention another city from this state, Surat, which is ranked 7th. I happened to work in Hazira, Surat for 6 months. I worked as a the sole procurement personnel for Electrical for the setup of a new plant for ESSAR Steel. I bought stuff worth Rs. 10 Crores way back in 2003, not to mention numerous, revised & improved rate-contracts with existing vendors. Although many quick purchases were made from Surat city itself,because Surat was primarily a textile city & had textile entrepreneurs, most of the purchases were done from Mumbai,Maharashtra,from where we could claim ModVat/CenVat.

 Not only did Mumbai, which is ranked 3rd in the tally, have hundreds of manufacturers of industrial equipment, especially electrical, but also it provided me with 4% Excise instead of 6% GST.  I visited Mumbai often as well, to meet relatives; these visits gave me a first hand look at the enterprise of the Mumbaikar: hardworking, methodical & calculative.

Come 2004 and I decided to join the IT Bandwagon. Leaving behind greener pastures to try something new. I joined TCS in Gurgaon, which is ranked 10th in the SME rankings. Gurgaon is actually a part of Delhi-NCR. Thus Delhi(ranked 5th),Faridabad(ranked 8th) & Gurgaon can be looked at as one region. Each of these cities though have a different speciality though. While Faridabad is primarily a hub of small scale manufacturers of automobile spare-parts, leather and other manufactured goods, Gurgaon is known world over for it BPO/KPO & IT industry, not to mention the prior established Electronic and automobile plants, & Delhi being a big commercial hub, nothing in this world can beat the enthusiasm of a Sardar selling stuff!Although I worked in Gurgaon now for quite a while, I still fondly remember my summer vacation visits to folks back in Delhi.

I used to work for a strategic business unit, TCS-Financial Services, a product arm of the Company which was primarily into IT Services.Imagine 1/50 of the people (3000 of 1,50,000) generating a quarter of the revenue. Imagine that TCS-BaNCS became the no.1 Financial product in it domain within 3 years,this all happened after TCS's public listing in late 2004.Yes I was among the ones who had seen it through. The SBU is headed by N G Subramaniam, based in Banglore(which ranks 2nd in the SME list.) Now Bangaluru, is the IT capital of India. There are thousands of startups in Banglore, not to mention small,medium and large size companies.People from all over India, come here to kick start their careers in IT, as well as Companies from all over the Globe come here to take advantage of the large pool of talent and the IT infrastructure. This explains its high SME ranking.

 When we tend to work hard, we like to party harder. And thats where I will mention Jaipur(ranked 9th), a weekend getaway, at a 5 hr journey from Gurgaon.The Jaipur city palaces are a must watch! Jaipur, primarily dependent on tourism, has a lot many people who have developed various businesses around tourism.

 I can explain my connection to Chennai(ranked 6th) as well. My father was an aeronautical engineer from IIT Madras. This explains my roots to this city.

The only city in the ranking, with which I cannot explain my direct connection to, is Hyderabad.
As an ISB aspirant shall I take this as a SIGN ?
Afterall how could HE leave out Hyderabad......I hope Buddha will smile with me, for me!!