Additional Secretary, Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana – National Rural Livelihoods Mission, Shri Charanjit Singh and Chief General Manager, State Bank of India, Corporate office Mumbai Shri Shantanu Pendsey signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) today to facilitate Enterprise Financing for rural Self-Help Group (SHG) women.

Shri Charanjit Singh termed it a significant step in enabling Two Crore Lakhpati Didis from SHG women, as envisioned by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi.

State Bank of India introduced a specialized financial product, “Svyam Siddha”, exclusively tailored for SHG women entrepreneurs seeking loans up to Rs. 5 lakhs. This initiative is uniquely designed to alleviate the challenges associated with extensive documentation requirements for bank loan applications and reduce the Turn Around Time (TAT). The requirement of burdensome documents like quotations and Detailed Project Reports (DPRs) has been dispensed with, allowing an easy application process where a simple loan application with KYC details can be submitted at local SBI bank branches. DAY-NRLM will facilitate the loan application process and oversee loan repayment through its dedicated field cadre.

At the same event, a training toolkit package was also launched to promote access to formal finance by SHG women entrepreneurs, marking a significant milestone in DAY-NRLM’s commitment to empowering communities and advancing financial inclusion at the grassroots level. The toolkit covers crucial topics like fundamentals of banking, concepts on financial statements, working capital calculation etc. The key modules of this toolkit have been converted into animated videos for self-capacity building of entrepreneurs. This will facilitate access to formal finance for its SHGs women entrepreneurs. Developed in collaboration with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) under the World Bank-funded National Rural Economic Transformation Project (NRETP), this toolkit aims to enhance the capacities of State Rural Livelihoods Missions (SRLMs), to facilitate increased access to formal finance by SHG members for their economic enterprises.

The MoU signing event was joined by Director, Rural Livelihoods, MoRD Shri Raghvendra Pratap Singh and Deputy Managing Director, Head Agriculture, SME and Financial Inclusion of State Bank of India Shri Surendra Ran along with NMMU, The World Bank and the IFC officials.