The rapid growth of IT-based Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), particularly in emerging markets like India, creates increasing pressure to scale operations while maintaining agility and innovation. Digital infrastructure, organisational routines, and platform-oriented models are becoming essential enablers of this transformation. While many large enterprises have adopted platform-based operating models to enhance scalability, little is known about how SMEs, often constrained by limited resources, manage their product portfolios and technology infrastructure to support growth. The applicability and maturity of platform thinking in SMEs remains underexplored. This study investigates how IT-based SMEs manage the complexities of growth by examining their product strategies, technology adoption, and organisational capabilities. It also explores how concepts such as the Platform Operating Model (POM) are understood and applied within SME contexts. A qualitative, inductive research design was adopted. Data was collected through five semi-structured interviews, three with SME executives and two with professionals from multinational corporations (MNCs) and analysed thematically. The analysis revealed five key themes: informal versus data-driven product portfolio management, technology maturity gaps, evolving organisational structures, partial or conceptual platform adoption, and capability-based scalability challenges. The study contributes to the Resource-Based View, Dynamic Capabilities Theory, and Platform Operating Model literature by illustrating how resource configurations, platform maturity, and transformation capabilities differ between SMEs and MNCs. The findings suggest that scalable growth in IT-based SMEs depends on technical infrastructure and the institutionalisation of modular systems, leadership routines, and cross-functional coordination to enable organisational transformation.