Small Industries Development Bank of India (Sidbi) today said it has entered into a partnership with Google India Pvt Ltd (GIPL) for piloting a social impact lending programme with financial assistance up to ₹1 crore at competitive interest rates to MSMEs.
This partnership with GIPL brings a corpus of $15 million (around ₹110 crore) to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) as a crisis response related to Covid-19, Sidbi said in a release.
Under it, a loan programme targeted at micro-enterprises (having turnover up to ₹5 crore), with loan sizes ranging between ₹25 lakh to ₹1 crore, is being implemented by Sidbi, the release said.
“We look to this collaboration to enhance our efforts in expanding the sector’s access to credit and are very eager to see the constructive impact that we can achieve together,” Sidbi’s Chairman and Managing Director Sivasubramanian Ramann said in the release.
This also marks Sidbi’s launch of a paperless journey to its customers from on-boarding to the disbursal stage, he added.
Speaking about the collaboration, Sanjay Gupta, Vice President and Country Manager, Google India, said, “We have had a longstanding commitment to enable India’s small businesses in leveraging the opportunity provided by digital so that they scale, innovate and reach new customers through a range of tools, services and products that is especially designed for them. Right at the outset of Covid-19, we launched a series of efforts that responded to the fact that these businesses have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. In joining hands with SIDBI, which has a deep understanding of the growth needs of this large and dispersed ecosystem, we’re pleased to expand our support to these enterprises.”
Major focus under the programme shall be on enterprises run by women entrepreneurs, with suitable interest rate concession also envisaged for such enterprises, the release said.
Source: Mint