Maharashtra tops in Emerging India Awards entries

CNBC-TV18-ICICI Bank Emerging India Awards for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) has received the 35,000 entries this year compared with 5,000 nominations last year.

The entries were received in auto, ancillary and engineering, pharma & chemicals, FMCG, food & agri-business, gems & jewellery, textiles & apparel, information technology, communications and entertainment (ICE) & IT enabled services, infrastructure, travel & tourism, retail trade commodity trade and others.

The response from the SMEs across the country shows Maharashtra leads with 37.5 per cent of the entries which translates into 11,616 SMEs. Tamil Nadu comes in second with 17.3 per cent with 5,375 entries. New Delhi was third at 7.4 per cent "� 2,290 entries.

The reason for the Maharashtra leading the list is its leadership on industrial front.

The state's endeavor has been to develop sustaining industrial growth, facilitate speedier flow of investment by creating conductive industrial climate.

The awards have been initiated by ICICI Bank and CNBC-TV18 and powered by Crisil.

The awards are an initiative to recognise SMEs across the country, which have a combined net worth of Rs 75 crore.

SMEs, after agriculture, are high on bank's investment list. Attractive returns of around 8-10 per cent have prompted banks to renew focus on SMEs. The awards are an attempt to help the SME sector across the country to gear up for technological modernisation, better systems, access to finance and even tougher competition.

The Emerging India Awards will follow a three-stage evaluation process beginning in November 2006.

The first stage entails a review of the financial statements of the nominees by Crisil. The second stage follows with a detailed evaluation of financials as well as other parameters of top 25 entries and three SMEs in each category are further shortlisted for the third stage.

The final evaluation is conducted by a specially appointed jury comprising of the leading lights of the corporate world and Crisil.