Most SME owners are busy fighting fires — late supplies, machine breakdowns, chasing payments. In the process, they don’t notice how these everyday issues are quietly eating away at growth and profits.
We call these hidden leaks. Left unchecked, they can prevent an SME from advancing to the next level — from ₹10 Cr to ₹25 Cr, or from a Tier-2 to a Tier-1 customer.
1. The Hidden Leaks That Hold Back SMEs
- Supply side: price fluctuations, uncertified materials, and delayed vendors.
- Shop floor: scrap, downtime, lack of preventive maintenance.
- Sales side: over-reliance on 1–2 customers, no new approvals.
- Cash flow: receivables piling up, urgent purchases draining margins.
- People: operators without training, the owner doing all planning.
- Systems: no dashboards, poor digital presence.
Each looks small alone. Together, they can reduce margins by 5–10% and block bigger customer wins.
2. Why Owners Don’t Notice Them
- Firefighting mindset: focus on today’s delivery, not tomorrow’s growth.
- No structured review: problems are seen as “normal,” not patterns.
- Dependency: one vendor, one customer, one person holding knowledge.
3. The Growth Check Approach
Instead of chasing problems randomly, SMEs need a structured Growth Check.
This looks at all aspects of sourcing, operations, sales, finance, people, and systems to find where the real bottleneck lies.
Once the leaks are identified, the owner can:
- Cut costs (by reducing scrap & sourcing inefficiency).
- Increase profits (by managing cash flow better).
- Grow faster (by preparing for bigger customers and vendor approvals).
SME growth is not about doing more, but about fixing the right leaks first.
A small improvement in sourcing, shop floor, or cash flow can create lakhs in savings and open the door to bigger customers.