SMEs innovate for growth

PETALING JAYA: This year’s submissions for the Star Outstanding Business Awards (SOBA) showed an encouraging trend of growth among small and medium enterprises (SMEs), especially when weighed against the current economic situation, according to a number of the awards’ judges.

SME Association of Malaysia president Datuk Michael Kang, alongside fellow judges Malaysia Retail Chain Association deputy treasurer-general Datuk Winnie Lim and BURSA MALAYSIA BHD listing development securities market primary market senior vice-president Hanita Othman.

Kang, for one, attributes the growth to the applicants’ entrepreneurial spirit, which he believes is needed to run a sustainable business. This means a combination of agility and business acumen in seeking out new opportunities to diversify revenue channels, as well as innovating the business in various ways to meet evolving market demands.

“They have really looked into how to innovate their businesses according to market trends and how to move forward with market needs, as compared to the bad year they had previously due to political and economic uncertainty, ” he said.

Lim concurred with his views and added, “Although the market is supposed to be bad, but we’ve found that they’re doing relatively good because they’re innovating their business model and strategy and tapping into new opportunities.

“These efforts are in line with current consumer sentiment and aligned with market trends. Businesses are still growing.”

As such, Kang and Lim believed that on average, there has been relatively good improvement in terms of the quality of the applications.

Lim also noted that there were new types of applicants that ‘bring hope’ with their potential and were only lacking the right presentation.

“SOBA is a good platform for SMEs to benchmark themselves with their peers for growth. You can see them taking the first step, even though they’re still small. There are also companies that have strong business fundamentals, but don’t know how to tell their stories, ” she said.

Hanita provided a slightly different perspective to the proceedings, revealing that there were a number of applicants with keen interest in going public.

“Based on the submissions I’ve seen, SMEs are showing growth in terms of profit, which took a dip in 2018 but went up in 2019. There’s a lot of interest in listing.

“SMEs [aspiring for listing] need a good story to sell the company to investors. Branding is still a key weakness when competing against the big boys, so listing would open up a new avenue for growth.”

Source: TheStar