FICCI FLO, under the leadership of the National President, Ms. Puja Garg, hosted an informative webinar, titled “Secure, Scale, and Succeed: Legal Essentials for MSMEs,” featuring Dr. Rashi Suri, founder of Managing Partner at Upscale Legal. This virtual season highlighted the top legal challenges for MSMEs, including delayed payments, and regulatory compliance.
Dr. Suri emphasized that MSMEs should seek the help of a professional corporate lawyer for securing unpaid dues, contract drafting, dispute settlement, intellectual property protection, licensing obligations, and dispute resolution mechanisms. She discussed about claiming interest and recovering money after buyers delay payments.
Under the MSMED Act, MSMEs can recover delayed payments with aggressive compound interest at three times the RBI bank rate. Buyers must pay within 45 days. Otherwise, MSMEs can claim the interest digitally through the official MSME Samadhaan Portal (MSME Facilitation Council) to initiate mandatory conciliation and arbitration by the MSEFC.
According to Dr. Rashi Suri, proper documentation is crucial, including well-drafted contracts with clear payment terms, confidentiality provisions, indemnity clauses, and dispute resolution mechanisms. She advised women entrepreneurs to seek professional legal assistance for creating agreements rather than trying to handle complex legal matters independently.
In case of dispute, the legal professional can do negotiation or perform skilled drafting and advocacy before commercial courts and arbitral forums. A corporate lawyer represents an MSME before tax, labour and licensing authories in show cause and penalty proceedings.
Dr. Rashi Suri also discussed top financial incentives in public procurement, such as exemption from paying Earnest Money Deposit (EMD) in government tenders. She added that MSMEs can save upto 2% to 5% of tender value freed as upfront working capital. Eligble enterprise can obtain collateral free credit under the Credit Guarantee Fund Trust for Micro and Small Enterprises.
This webinar was held in collaboration between the FLO MSME Initiative, led by Initiative Lead, Ruby Garg and Co-Lead Jyoti Jain, and the FLO Legal Advocacy Initiative, led by Initiative Lead, Divya Abhishek and Co-Lead Shubhraa Maheswari.