India's Best SMEs: The top four

The inspiring stories of the four top winners of the BT-YES Bank SME Awards.

Pramod Maheshwari
Chairman/MD/CEO, Career Point
Category: Star CEO (Medium)
Revenues (2010/11): Rs 79 CR
Profit after tax (2010/11): Rs 23 CR

An Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, graduate, Pramod Maheshwari gave up many job offers as well as his dream of working in the United States for his mother's sake. She was reluctant to let him leave his hometown Kota, Rajasthan, for work. Instead he turned entrepreneur, starting Career Point, a coaching centre for students aspiring to take the joint entrance examination (JEE) for the IITs and some other engineering institutes. He held his first classes in his father's tyre godown.

Debtosh Chatterjee
MD/CEO, Chatterjee Cleaning Arts
Category: Star CEO (Small)
Revenues (2010/11): Rs 39 CR
Profit after tax (2010/11): Rs 87 lakh

When he started out 20 years ago, Debtosh Chatterjee used to personally scour away stains in his clients' toilets, hoping to earn Rs 1,000 by the month-end. Today, as Managing Director and CEO of Chatterjee Cleaning Arts Services, a Kolkata-based facility management firm, he signs cheques worth many times that sum, including some related to the upkeep of his Mercedes C-Class.

Shyam Sunder Sharma
CEO, Ganesha Ecosphere
Category: Star SME-Overall (Medium)
Revenues (2010/11): Rs 291 CR
PROFIT AFTER TAX (2010/11): Rs 18.02 CR

Listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange, Ganesha Ecosphere was set up by Shyam Sunder Sharma in 1994. Sharma had started a dyed and doubled yarn producing mill in Kanpur in 1989, but was keen to do something unconventional.

Shripad Madhavrao Khatav
CEO, S.S. Techno Services
Categories: Star SME-Overall (Small)
Best Green SME (Small)
Best SME for Innovation (Small)
Revenues (2010/11): Rs 55 CR
Profit after tax (2010/11): Rs 3.9 cr

After 30 years in the business, chemical engineer Shripad Madhavrao Khatav set up a consultancy, S.S. Techno Services, in Pune in 1997. Since then the company has moved on to manufacturing with much success, earning revenues of Rs 55 crore in 2010/11, with a net profit of Rs 3.9 crore. It makes evaporators and dryers: while earlier these were separate products, it now makes dryers only as part of evaporators. The products are designed by Khatav himself.