The standup India facilitates bank loans from Rs 10 lakh to Rs 1 crore to at least one scheduled caste/scheduled tribe borrower and at least one woman borrower per bank branch of scheduled commercial banks to launch their first venture in the manufacturing, services, or trading sector. The scheme currently has 305 lenders and connected with over 1.46 lakh bank branches even as Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her FY20 budget speech last year had announced the scheme’s extension to till 2025.
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The scheme largely had women entrepreneurs as its beneficiaries with more than 81 per cent account holders being women as of February 17, 2020, according to the Ministry of Finance. 73,155 accounts belonged to women entrepreneurs while Rs 16712.72 crore was sanctioned under the Standup India scheme to these women. Women and SC/ST entrepreneurs’ share in public procurement have also improved over the years. Women entrepreneurs’ share in the 25 per cent annual procurement target by the government from MSMEs was up from 0.15 per cent in FY19 to 0.32 per cent in FY20 and 0.61 per cent in FY21 so far. Similarly, for SC/ST entrepreneurs, the share was 0.54 per cent in FY19 increasing marginally to 0.55 per cent in FY20 and 0.62 per cent in FY21 so far, according to the data as of December 15, 2020, from the MSME Sambandh portal