PSBs told to setup one portal for startup lending

Time of India

a day ago

The government has directed public sector banks to create a unified digital portal to streamline startup loan applications, sanctions, and information-sharing. Expected by October, the proposed startup hub portal will feature a single application form accessible to all PSBs.
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The government has asked state-run banks to explore the idea of setting up a " common startup hub portal " for meeting the financial needs of startups , officials said.The centralised platform, proposed to be launched by October, would enable streamlined startup applications, loan sanctions , cross-lending and information-sharing across public sector banks (PSBs), they said."The portal will act as a single destination for all startups looking for loans, and will have a common application form. All PSBs will be able to access their details and participate as per their business plans," said one of the officials, who did not wish to be identified.The government has been pushing banks to scale up lending to startups, and a common portal is expected to speed up loan sanctions and approvals.Loans to startups by PSBs in 2024-25 stood at Rs 956 crore."The portal will ensure a full end-to-end digital sanction and approval process. We are also working to link it with the Jan Samarth Portal. This new platform will be managed through PSB Alliance," a bank executive said on condition of anonymity.The government has asked PSBs to collaborate with educational institutions and incubation centres to identify and monitor early-stage startups to establish formal banking linkages. Punjab National Bank chief executive Ashok Chandra told ET in an interview after the June quarter results that the bank had come out with a new startup lending policy."We have created startup hubs in seven centres across the country and are going to have a memorandum of understanding with the many incubation centres at IIT Mumbai, Kanpur, Chennai and Delhi," he had said.After a review meeting of PSBs in June, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had asked banks to proactively identify emerging commercial growth areas for the next decade and deepen corporate lending in productive sectors with a strong focus on maintaining robust underwriting and risk-management standards.The government has been pushing lenders to look at internal collaboration, create common utilities and scale them up to improve their performance and competitiveness.