‘High-cost investment is a barrier for MSMEs as they might not have sufficient funds’

Gautham Raju, Senior Manager – Global Air Freight and Head of Air Freight at WIZ said, “We can say that it is not entirely due to knowledge gaps and skill shortages even though we are lacking behind when compared to other sectors. Govt is implementing new policies in place such as NLP and also FTA’s like recently with UK to boost MSME business which will indirectly empower them to implement emerging technologies. The main barrier which we see with MSME’s on adapting to the advanced technologies like AI, IoT and Blockchain is high-cost investment as they might not have sufficient allocations on their annual budget to implement these and maintaining it. Meanwhile the integration of data from the existing systems might be also another challenge which may also end up in data privacy issues. Moreover, they are already comfortable with the process they are currently with, and it might take some time at their level to switch with high end tech savvy apps.