Why India’s SME Market Is Getting More Interesting

One theme we’ve been spending more time researching in India is the established SME and mid-market business.

Not startups chasing the next big idea.

Businesses that have been operating for 20–30+ years, built real capabilities and customer relationships, and are now sitting in the path of much larger structural themes.

Data centres.
Electrification.
Infrastructure.
Renewable energy.
Manufacturing.

And the interesting part is what happens when those two things meet.

We came across one example recently in electrical equipment manufacturing.

The business has been around since 1990, but revenue grew from roughly ₹90 crore in FY24 to ₹201 crore in FY26, while EBITDA reached ₹46 crore and the EBITDA margin expanded to nearly 23%.

What caught our attention wasn’t simply the growth.

It was where the growth was coming from.

Data-centre revenue increased from ₹4.8 crore in FY24 to almost ₹100 crore in FY26, becoming roughly half of revenue. The company is supplying electrical panels and power-distribution equipment into data centres, industrial projects, metro and rail, renewables and other infrastructure markets.

Its latest presentation also showed a ₹205 crore executable order book, including ₹98 crore from data-centre projects, with 72% of revenue coming from existing customers.

The deeper discussion around the business was even more interesting.

Investors were looking beyond the headline numbers at things like specialized PDU products, qualification and testing requirements, OEM relationships and whether those capabilities create a barrier to entry as data-centre investment accelerates.

That distinction matters.

There’s a big difference between:

“This is a good company in a growing market.”

and

“This is an established business whose capabilities are becoming more valuable because the market around it is changing.”

That’s where I think the Indian SME landscape gets particularly interesting for private capital.

The broader capital market is already reflecting that interest. India’s PE/VC ecosystem recorded $60.7 billion across 1,475 deals in 2025, with growth investments leading activity. In 1H2026, India recorded another $20.5 billion across 604 PE/VC deals. Data centres and allied sectors attracted approximately $45.3 billion of commitments and investments across 86 deals between 2021 and June 2026.

There is also meaningful policy support around the SME ecosystem.

The government’s RAMP programme has a ₹6,062.45 crore outlay and is designed to improve MSME access to finance, markets and technology, while also strengthening competitiveness and reducing delayed payments. The SRI Fund framework is intended to facilitate ₹50,000 crore of equity support for MSMEs, and the CGTMSE guarantee ceiling has been raised to ₹10 crore.

So you have an interesting combination emerging:

Established businesses + structural growth themes + increasing institutional capital + stronger financing support.

For investors, that creates a much broader opportunity set than simply looking for the next startup.

There are thousands of businesses that may look ordinary on the surface but have spent decades building the capabilities, customer relationships and execution track record needed to participate in India’s next investment cycle.

Old businesses. New tailwinds.

That’s a part of the Indian SME landscape we’ve become increasingly interested in.

And for those of us looking at India from the outside, it raises an interesting question:

Are Indian SMEs becoming a market worth paying closer attention to for searchers and lower-middle-market investors?

We’re still digging into it ourselves, but the combination of established businesses, structural growth themes and an increasingly active capital ecosystem is making the market pretty interesting.