Title: Digitisation, digitalisation, digital transformation and growth - a study of small and medium enterprises in India

Authors: Anindita Basu; Tamal Datta Chaudhuri

Addresses: ICFAI University, Lower Sinchey, Gangtok – 737101, Sikkim, India ' Bengal Economic Association, 1st Floor, 87/277, Raja S.C. Mallick Road, Ganguly Bagan, Kolkata – 700047, India

Abstract: Since the past five decades, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in India have contributed significantly to output and employment and have become essential to the production and services infrastructure of the economy. It has been studied that digitisation, digitalisation and digital transformation (DDT) can improve efficiency, profitability and growth among SMEs. This paper studies the extent of adoption of DDT by a sample of listed SMEs in India and examines its impact on their growth. Unlike traditional methods of interviewing SMEs, this study uses a text-mining method to estimate the extent of DDT. The key words have been drawn from the literature, and the proposed methodology can help in understanding the relative positioning of the SME units in IT adoption and areas for policy intervention. We define an index of digitisation which helps us in identifying companies that are still under digitised. Further, as the period of our study is that of the COVID pandemic, the effect of digitisation has not yet been reflected in their sales growth.

Keywords: small and medium enterprises; SMEs; digitisation; digitalisation; text-mining; index of digitisation; IOD; sales growth; digitalisation and digital transformation; DDT; India.

DOI: 10.1504/IJGSB.2023.136873

International Journal of Globalisation and Small Business, 2023 Vol.13 No.4, pp.417 - 433

Received: 01 Dec 2022
Accepted: 24 May 2023
Published online: 23 Feb 2024 *

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