Having scored business volumes of Rs 10,000 crore at the Uttar Pradesh International Trade Show (UPITS) in Greater Noida, the Yogi Adityanath government 2.0 is upping the ante for the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) with eyes on the $trillion economy target.
The state is bracing up for hosting a string of B2B (business-to-business) meeting and trade shows to bolster ‘Make in UP’ before domestic and foreign buyers.
The success of UPITS nudged the Yogi dispensation to espouse the B2B model for providing an easy market access to the state’s MSMEs and catalyse entrepreneurship.
Recently, Yogi underlined his government was taking steps to provide a global marketing and networking platform to the MSMEs. “UP is working towards becoming a $trillion economy. Unlike earlier times, UP today is reckoned as the growth engine of India.”
The 2nd edition of the five-day UPITS last month logged nearly 550,000 in footfall, and saw the participation of 500+ global buyers from 70 countries.
Now, the trade extravaganzas planned at the divisional level will promote the local industries and indigenous crafts, especially under the purview of UP’s flagship One District One Product (ODOP) scheme, which has already been co-opted by several states.
“After the success of the UPITS, the government has decided to organise trade shows at the division level to promote Brand UP,” UP MSME minister Rakesh Sachan said.
Interestingly, the proposed trade shows would complement the investors’ summit that the Yogi government has been organising with remarkable success after coming to power in March 2017.
In the UP Global Investors Summit (GIS) organised in February 2023, the Yogi government garnered investment proposals of about Rs 40 trillion, of which projects worth more than Rs 10 trillion were launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Lucknow on February 19, 2024.
At the same time, additional projects totalling Rs 10 trillion in different sectors are also in the pipeline.
“The influx of foreign visitors, their interest in UP’s local products and readiness to forge business alliances signals the pivotal role that the UPITS played in promoting economic development and employment generation,’ a government official remarked.
It witnessed a series of G2G (Government-2-Government), B2B (Business-2-Business) and B2C (Business-to-Consumer) transactions.
In a similar vein, the divisional level trade shows and B2B meets would take the agenda forward and directly contribute to UP achieving the ambitious $trillion economy target by 2028.
Moreover, the trade show circuit is expected to boost entrepreneurship and groom startups at the local level, thus fueling self-employment opportunities and curbing migration of youth in search of jobs.
On September 25, Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar inaugurated the 2nd edition of UPITS 2024 in Greater Noida. Vietnam was the partner country for the event.
In his address, yogi said no big industry could grow without a strong MSME base. UP has the maximum number of MSMEs at 9.6 million units, representing 14 percent of India’s MSME universe.
India has around 24,000 big industries, while there are 60 million MSME units providing livelihood to 210 million people in the country.