Lucknow: Fulfilling a promise made in the 2020 Union budget, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman launched the Ubharte Sitaare Fund for small and mid-cap industries in Lucknow on Saturday.
The fund, anchored by India Exim Bank and SIDBI, will provide financial and logistical support to small companies to meet their export ambitions.
“The launch of the fund has been delayed, but it is largely due to the Covid pandemic. I also think it has been beneficial for a state for two reasons, one that it has the highest number of MSMEs in the state and two, that its one district-one product scheme has already competitively identified sectors which the banks can immediately start funding and handholding,” the minister said.
She further highlighted steps taken by the Centre to promote the MSME sector in the country, starting with a production linked incentive scheme. The Atma Nirbhar Bharat scheme is similarly promoting indigenous manufacturing and service providers. “The Ubharte Sitaare Fund will make investments in export-oriented small and mid-sized companies and help script a new paradigm of growth in exports,” she said.
UP’s MSME minister Sidharth Nath Singh said that the fund would be very beneficial for the state, which has 90 million MSMEs. “In the past four and a half years, the state government and ensured easy loans to the sector, leading to an addition of 70 lakh new MSMEs in this period. We have been able to give loans of 2.5 lakh crore in 4.5 years, creating employment of 2.6 crore. This is a record,” he said.
The Ubharte Sitaare Fund will work by identifying Indian companies that have the potential to be future champions in the domestic arena, while catering to global demands, explained an official. He said that the programme will diagnose hurdles and constraints of the identified enterprises, and assist them in their growth and export strategies through financial and advisory services.
“Under the programme, the Ubharte Sitaare Fund, co-sponsored by India Exim Bank and SIDBI with a contribution of Rs 40 crore each was registered with SEBI in July 2021. The corpus of the fund is Rs 250 crore. The Fund would invest by way of equity, and equity-like products in export-oriented units, both in the manufacturing and services sectors,” said SP Singh, CEO of SIDBI Venture Capital Ltd.
Harsha Bangari, deputy managing director of India Exim Bank, said that the bank had developed a robust pipeline of over 100 potential proposals and supported several companies across a diverse range of sectors. Some of these companies include a manufacturer of key ingredients for Covid vaccines and black fungus drug and a company promoting environmental sustainability by recycling and manufacturing key inputs for FMCG packaging, she said.