One night, 20 honours: The ET MSME Awards 2025 finale is almost here!

India’s micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) are having a complicated year. Freight rates are up, export routes are under pressure, and emerging technologies are booming faster than most small businesses can keep pace with. And yet, the MSME sector has been growing and producing businesses worth celebrating.

That is exactly what the ET MSME Awards 2025 finale is set to do on March 24 in New Delhi.

For most people walking into the room, the grand felicitation ceremony will represent something far larger than a trophy or certificate. It will be the first time their business has been recognised on a national platform, or the first time someone outside their city, cluster, or sector has looked at what they built and said, “this is worth acknowledging”.


For first-generation business owners, women entrepreneurs who have scaled a micro or small enterprise against considerable odds, and for founders who have never had the budget or the profile to compete for mainstream visibility, such recognition opens doors to banks, buyers, and partners. It tells a story about a business that the business itself sometimes struggles to tell.

An agenda for the times
But here is what the ET MSME Awards 2025 finale offers even to those who didn’t participate. In simply registering for the evening, you will get exclusive access to conversations and networking opportunities bar none.

The evening opens with a spotlight session on the road ahead for India's MSME ecosystem, delivered by Dr. Rajneesh, Additional Secretary and Development Commissioner at the Ministry of Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises. This is a policymaker laying out, on the record, where the sector is headed. For any business owner trying to plan beyond the next quarter, this context alone is worth the evening.

A second spotlight session on democratising digital commerce for India's MSMEs will be led by Sanjiv Singh, Joint Secretary at the Department for Promotion of Industries and Internal Trade, Ministry of Commerce. The gap between having a quality product and being able to sell it at scale online remains one of the most persistent frustrations in the small business economy. Expect this session to address it with specificity.

The centrepiece of the evening’s programming is the panel discussion ‘Strategic Trade in a Shifting World: How MSMEs Can Diversify and Drive Global Growth’. Jae Kyeong Lee, Managing Director of the Korea SMEs and Startups Agency, brings the perspective of one of Asia's most successful small business internationalisation models. Mathias Emil Bengtsson, First Secretary for Trade Policy and Economic Affairs at the Embassy of Denmark in India, represents one of Europe's most MSME-forward economies. Mukund Narayanamurti, General Manager, South Asia for Austrade, adds the lens of a major Indo-Pacific trade partner that has been deepening its MSME engagement with India. And Dr. Neeraj Kharwal, Managing Director of the India Trade Promotion Organisation, anchors the conversation from the domestic policy side.

With Indian exporters currently navigating freight disruptions, rerouted supply chains, and the ongoing fallout of West Asia tensions along critical trade corridors, this panel doubles as a live briefing on decisions MSMEs should be making right now.

A closing discussion on the ease of doing business for SMEs brings further weight to the agenda, with Pankaj Chadha, Chairman of EEPC India; Abhay Sinha, Director General of the Services Export Promotion Council; Ponnuswami M, Co-Chair of the CII National Task Force on EoDB; Sribharat Mathukumilli, MP, Visakhapatnam; and Rishi Agarwal, Co-founder and CEO of TeamLease Regtech and fellow Co-Chair of the CII National Task Force for Ease of Doing Business. This is the conversation small business owners across India have been asking for, and it is happening tomorrow.

Twenty categories, every kind of success
The award categories span the full width of Indian enterprise, from automobile and OEM to pharmaceuticals, electronics, and apparel. The women’s entrepreneur awards across the micro, small, and medium categories, the innovation awards, the fastest-growing MSME recognitions, and the top exporter honours across manufacturing, services, and trading together paint a picture of a sector that is far more diverse, ambitious, and globally connected than it is usually given credit for.

The evening will be closed by Dr. Subhransu Sekhar Acharya, Chairman-cum-Managing Director of NSIC, bringing a fitting institutional close to what promises to be a substantive gathering.

If you work in or around the MSME sector or simply believe small businesses are the most underreported engine of the Indian economy, tomorrow evening is worth your time.

The nominations are done, the evaluations are in, and the finalists know who they are. All that is left is the room, and what happens in it.

The country’s most definitive MSME stage returns on March 24, 2026, in New Delhi. Secure your chance to meet partners and markets that move businesses forward. Register now for the ET MSME Awards 2025: etmsmeawards.com