Nearly ₹29K cr sanctioned to SC/ST, women entrepreneurs since April 2022
The finance minister, in reply to a Rajya Sabha question, said the objective of the Stand-Up India Scheme was to provide loans from scheduled commercial banks (SCBs) of value between ₹ 10 lakh and ₹ 1 crore to at least one scheduled caste (SC) or scheduled tribe (ST) borrower and one woman borrower per Bank branch for setting up a greenfield enterprise in the manufacturing, services, or trading sector and also for activities allied to agriculture.
Apart from linking prospective borrowers with banks for loans, the online portal (www.standupmitra.in) under the scheme provided guidance to prospective SC, ST, and Women entrepreneurs in their endeavour to set up business enterprises, starting from training to filling up of loan applications as per bank requirements, Sitharaman said.
She added that the portal also facilitated step-by-step guidance for connecting prospective borrowers to various agencies with specific expertise, viz., skilling centres, mentoring support, entrepreneurship development programme centres, and district industries centres, together with addresses and contact numbers.
The Stand-Up India Scheme was launched on 5 April 2016.
According to the information shared by the finance minister in the upper house, 30,145 loan accounts with SCs were sanctioned for a total amount of ₹ ₹ 6,437.59 crore between April 2022 and March 2025.
During this period, the loan account numbers of STs stood at 9,625 with a sanctioned amount of ₹ 2,037.15 crore. Women entrepreneurs had 86,738 loan accounts with a sanctioned amount of ₹ 20,521.41 crore.
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