Stand-Up India Scheme to Promote Women Entrepreneurship at Grass Root Level Extended till 2025

By: WE Staff | Monday, 5 April 2021

The Finance Ministry on Sunday said banks have sanctioned Rs 25,586 crore to about 1,14,322 beneficiaries under the Stand-Up India Scheme in the last five years for promoting entrepreneurship among women and SC & STs. This scheme, which has been extended up to 2025, covers SC/ST and/or women entrepreneurs, above 18 years of age.

Stand-Up India was launched by the Government of India on 5 April 2016 to support entrepreneurship among women and SC & ST communities. The objective of Stand-Up India is to promote entrepreneurship amongst women, Scheduled Castes (SC) & Scheduled Tribes (ST) categories, to help them in starting a greenfield enterprise in the trading, manufacturing, and services sector, by both ready and trainee borrowers.

The campaign "Start-Up India" Stand-Up India was started by Hon'ble Prime Minister, Shri. Narendra Modi in August 2015 to promote entrepreneurship at the grass-root level for economic empowerment and job creation. The Stand-Up India scheme was launched to coincide with the celebration of the 125th birth anniversary of Dr. Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar, seeks to leverage the institutional credit structure to reach out to the underserved sector of people such as Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, and Women entrepreneurs to enable them to participate in the economic growth of the nation.

Under the scheme, at least one Scheduled Caste/ Scheduled Tribe borrower and at least one woman borrower per Scheduled Commercial Bank branch receive bank loans ranging from Rs 10 lakh to Rs 1 crore. The scheme, which began on April 5, 2016, has benefited 93,094 women entrepreneurs and has a loan balance of Rs 21,200 crore as of March 23.

In the case of non-individual companies, SC/ST and/or Women Entrepreneurs should hold 51 percent of the shareholding and controlling interest, and borrowers should not be in default to any bank/financial institution.