Capital investment growth in India

India`s SMEs are keen to introduce fresh capital investment to upgrade their technologies, according to a Confederation of India Industry (CII) survey.

The survey revealed increase pressure on "bottomlines" of SMEs, in light of growing competition in the domestic and international markets, Financial Express reports.

The survey covered more than 1 000 responses (direct and indirect) from CII`s SME members and revealed 93% of the respondents plan to authorise more capital investments than the previous year.

Ten thousand Saudi SMEs fail annually, and 61% have not conducted feasibility studies, a recent study shows.

The study also found that two thirds of the businesses that did carry out a feasibility study did not employ a professional to do the job, but instead relied on personal efforts, which affected the results, Khaleej Times reports.

The study acknowledged that SMEs play a major and vital role in the economic development of a country through their contribution to GDP and employment and noted that a lack of a management systems, organisational structure and hands-on management exacerbated the rate of failure.

SMEs in the UK are failing to safeguard their company names, as the names are not being registered as trademarks.

According to the Patent Office 80% of SMEs have not registered their business as a trademark and 55% of entrepreneurs believe that they`ve protected their business enough, out-law.com reports.

"Companies are potentially putting themselves at risk of legal action from another company if they haven`t checked whether the name has already been trademarked," says head of Awareness Information at the Patent Office, Lawrence Smith-Hggins.

The Malaysian Chinese Association ICT Resources Centre (MIRC) launched an e-enablement campaign in May, which, through a partnership with technology vendors, aims to educate SMEs on the business benefits of ICT.

As part of the campaign, a billing management software program is being offered to Malaysian SMEs for a reduced price, after a survey revealed local SMEs sought an application that would enable the tracking of operations and the monitoring of business health on the fly, Star Tech Central reports.

MIRC hopes to "e-enable" 100 SMEs by the end of this month under the campaign.

The next IT service boom across the Asia-Pacific region will be fuelled by SMEs, researchers have predicted.

By the end of 2009, the region will see revenues cross $17.7 billion on IT services alone from $11 billion in 2005, Web India 123 reports.

"SMEs are big spenders on outsourced computing support, given their limited resources to maintain an in-house team," a research analyst says.