The Rs 50,000-crore Self-Reliant India (SRI) fund by the MSME Ministry has invested Rs 7,593 crore in 425 MSMEs so far, the ministry said in a post on X (formerly Twitter). Managed by the public lender State Bank of India’s (SBI) private equity arm SBICAP Ventures (SVL), the MSME Ministry had launched the fund in May 2020 with a 15-year tenure under the Aatmanirbhar Bharat package for equity infusion in MSMEs.
The fund includes a provision of Rs 10,006 crore from the government and the remaining amount from private equity and venture capital funds.
The fund operates with a mother-fund and daughter-fund structure for equity or quasi-equity investments. NSIC Venture Capital Fund Limited (NVCFL) which operates as Mother Fund in SRI Fund implementation, is a Category-II Alternative Investment Fund (AIF) with SEBI. The daughter funds investing in MSMEs need to invest at least five times the amount of capital contribution received from the SRI Fund.
According to the MSME Ministry, 51 daughter funds including TATA Capital Healthcare Fund, Aavishkaar India Fund, SVL-SME Fund, Gaja Capital India Fund, Avaana Sustainability Fund, ICICI Ventures’ India Advantage Fund S5 I, etc., have been empanelled with NVCFL in the last three years.
As per NVCFL, SRI is a sector-agnostic fund to support MSMEs in agriculture, pharma, auto, chemicals, etc., undertaking manufacturing or services business.
Meanwhile, the gross bank credit deployed to MSMEs under the priority sector lending as of December 2023 stood at Rs 23.87 lakh crore. The deployment grew by 19.1 per cent from Rs 20.03 lakh crore as of December 2022, as per the RBI data.
The amount deployed was 14.9 per cent of Rs 159.18 lakh crore in India’s total non-food credit during the month in comparison to 15.1 per cent during December 2022.
In terms of NPA, the gross non-performing assets in MSME loans by scheduled commercial banks declined by 14.3 per cent to Rs 1.31 lakh crore in FY23 from Rs 1.54 lakh crore during FY22.