FISME, Google and Qualcomm Launch AI Centre to Help MSMEs Adopt Practical AI Solutions

New Delhi, Oct 6 (KNN) The Federation of Indian Micro and Small & Medium Enterprises (FISME), in association with Google and Qualcomm Technologies, on Tuesday launched an AI & Digital Technologies Centre for MSMEs to promote practical adoption of artificial intelligence and digital technologies among small businesses.

The centre was inaugurated in the presence of Bharat Harbanslal Khera, Secretary, Ministry of MSME, and marks the launch of a multi-city awareness campaign, ‘Making AI Work for MSMEs’.

Speaking at the launch, Khera said AI adoption should be treated primarily as a productivity and cost-efficiency initiative rather than a technology exercise.

“For MSMEs, the question is not how sophisticated AI is, but whether it can reduce costs, improve quality, increase sales, simplify compliance and save the entrepreneur's time,” he said.

Khera said AI could democratise capabilities previously available mainly to large enterprises, allowing a Rs 5-crore business to access tools and capabilities that were earlier largely available to much larger companies.

He noted that nearly 98 per cent of India's enterprises fall under the micro category, making technology-led productivity improvements and scaling up key priorities.

Centre To Focus On Practical MSME Use Cases

FISME President Rakesh Chhabra said, “The centre would serve as a nodal platform connecting MSMEs with technology companies, AI experts, start-ups, academic institutions and government programmes.”

The initiative will focus on identifying business problems, developing AI use cases and prototypes, supporting deployment and documenting successful applications. It will also create a repository of MSME use cases, implementation experiences and best practices, he added.

Chhabra emphasised that FISME's network of MSME associations would help take the initiative beyond major technology centres and into industrial clusters across the country.

The centre will remain technology-neutral and focus on practical business needs, including quality control, inventory management, compliance, export documentation, customer service and manufacturing processes.

Khera said clusters could act as laboratories for developing common solutions to problems faced by large numbers of MSMEs.

“Rather than showing 100 AI tools to 1,000 MSMEs, we should identify one common problem faced by 1,000 MSMEs and develop a scalable solution,” the secretary said.

Government Schemes To Support Adoption

Khera said initiatives such as the IndiaAI Mission, RAMP, ZED, LEAN, cluster development and skilling programmes could provide the enabling ecosystem for MSME technology adoption.

He said the government's focus should move from awareness and training to actual deployment and measurable productivity gains. Emerging technologies such as robotics are also being considered as part of efforts to improve MSME productivity and quality standards.

“The real metric should not be people trained, but enterprises adopting AI and the productivity gained,” Khera said.

He suggested that the impact of the initiative could be assessed after a year by tracking MSMEs that have actually deployed AI, the problems addressed, costs involved, productivity gains and solutions that can be replicated across larger numbers of enterprises.

The ‘Making AI Work for MSMEs’ campaign will be taken to multiple cities through FISME's association network.

(KNN Bureau)