Aiming to strengthen collaboration between Indian and foreign Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), the government is planning a networking portal to help businesses connect with each other and forge partnerships.

MSME Secretary Arun Kumar Panda at an event recently said that the portal will enable MSMEs, particularly in small cities and towns to adopt futuristic technologies and become more competitive.

"We will be coming up with a digital portal this year itself where MSMEs can meet, collaborate, and contribute to each other's innovation and growth", Panda said.

He mentioned that the MSME Ministry has a database of 75 lakh (7.5 million) registered MSMEs, that can benefit from such collaboration.

Indian SMEs have to compete among themselves and large corporate in India and also SMEs and large corporate in the world. Hence, there are two important things to boost their manufacturing competitiveness: innovation and collaboration, Panda.