Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the previous year had been tough for small businesses and with the current surge in cases, there seems to be no respite. The pandemic has affected SMBs greatly and as a country, the need of the hour is to create jobs on a large scale, says Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Infosys. 

He says small businesses have great potential and a bright future in our country because India has millions of small businesses and they are the pillars of economic growth and job creation. Alone in the GST system, there are about 11-12 million businesses registered. He also feels that more numbers of businesses are now moving towards digitalization like an accounting system, point of sales systems and return of GST online, which will create a wealth of data. And, this data can then be used to provide them with better services like lending etc. 

According to Nilekani, small businesses are getting exposed to the digital world, and can start using their own database for the future. He has a strong belief that if every small business can create one or two more jobs, that may account for 50-100 million new jobs.    

At the summit, the Infosys co-founder stressed on the point that India now needs more job creators. He appreciated Amazon and other online marketplaces for creating mass job opportunities. He quoted an example saying if there are five million suppliers on the marketplace, and each creates 5 jobs, then together, the potential is to create 25 million new jobs. 

This is exactly what Nilekani told Amazon veteran Grandinetti and Nerurkar that this is the point they need to emphasize on. The need of the hour for a country like India now is job creators and you have the potential and resources to create jobs at scale and meet the never-ending demand.