Credit and Finance for MSMEs: Public sector lender Bank of Baroda on Wednesday announced it has partnered with the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) wholly-owned subsidiary Reserve Bank Innovation Hub (RBIH) to promote financial inclusion of women through technology. Bank of Baroda said it will be the ‘scale-up partner’ for RBIH’s inaugural edition of its programme Swanari TechSprint which would focus on developing digital solutions to help women achieve financial security and independence.
According to a whitepaper released by RBIH on the programme, with the right mix of support from the RBI and public or private sector service providers, the programme has the potential to impact the lives of more than 331 million adult women, including 13 million women-led enterprises and 7.45 million self-help groups across multiple thematic areas. These included improving access, adoption, and usage of digital financial services among lower-middle-income women; improving the readiness of service providers to offer relevant financial products; and enhancing entrepreneurship and better support mechanisms for women enterprises.
Bank of Baroda said TechSprints would have problem-solving sessions to promote innovation and collaboration to create technology-driven solutions to complex problems. The programme will be held from April 18 to April 22, 2022. “A collaborative approach, centered on innovation will ensure the best outcomes for women, accelerating financial inclusion and boosting the economic empowerment of women in the country,” said Vikramaditya Singh Khichi, Executive Director, Bank of Baroda.
The public lender added the programme will bring together fintechs, financial service providers, innovators and subject matter experts to code prototype solutions in real-time to the problems identified. “There are seven problem statements that have been identified and two event tracks are available for participation,” it added. One track will focus on creating a minimum viable product (MVP) with usable features to be tested by and validated by users. The second track will focus on solving problems and designing prototypes.
The finance gap for women-owned 15 million MSMEs, which are around 20 per cent of the 63-million MSMEs in India, stands at $158 billion with 90 per cent of such women entrepreneurs relying on informal sources of financing, Qamar Saleem, Regional Manager Asia & Pacific, Financial Institutions Group, IFC had said at the virtual Sankalp Global Summit in October last year.
