The National Small Industries Corporation (NSIC) is focused on promoting, aiding and fostering the growth of small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in India.
Over the past five decades the NSIC has evolved to promote modernisation, technology upgrades and the strengthening of links to large enterprises both in India and abroad.
To this end, it established an office in Johannesburg to manage operations into Africa. It wants to share its expertise with the country and the rest of Africa by providing consultancy services and training to SMEs.
Areas it covers include capacity building, policy and institutional framework development, entrepreneurship development and business development services.
Through the South African office, the NSIC wants to facilitate enterprise-to-enterprise cooperation between the two countries. This includes the export of machineries and equipment made by the SME sector in India to buyers in South Africa and providing training in India to South African entrepreneurs across a number of sectors.
Recently, the department of economic development in KwaZulu-Natal awarded the NSIC a project to review the current legislation and policies for the support of SMEs in the province. It had to identify any gaps and propose solutions based on its experiences in India and other countries.
The NSIC drafted a framework to facilitate reforms that stimulate the growth and development of SMEs and completed a feasibility study for the establishment of a similar organisation to the NSIC in KwaZulu-Natal.
The department signed a collaboration agreement with the NSIC to establish two technology development training centres. The NSIC assisted the department with projects to make exercise notebooks, wire nails and barbed wire as well as a mild steel wire drawing project to set up inside the proposed training centres.
The machinery required for these projects was exported from India and has been successfully installed at the designated sites in Pietermaritzburg and Hammarsdale.
A memorandum of agreement has also been signed with the Amathole district municipality in East London for the NSIC to carry out a feasibility study on the profile of small businesses in the area to guide a strategy focused around their development.
Other projects completed by the NSIC include installing of plastic injection moulding equipment at the Soshanguve Manufacturing Technology Demonstration Centre in Pretoria, and supplying of material for individual entrepreneurs through the country, ranging from wire nail-making to toilet roll making and other plastic injection moulding solutions.
The NSIC has signed agreements with the North West department of economic development and the Free State Development Corporation to share experiences and best practices to develop small businesses.
The South African office of the NSIC is in touch with a number of small businesses with whom it is sharing its experiences in the development of best practices for the expansion and modernisation of their manufacturing activities.
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