Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) has touched the lives of more than 360 lakh people in the MSME sector, directly and indirectly through various credit measures, informed officials in the 19th Annual General Meeting of SIDBI on July 07, 2017, in Lucknow.

In the meeting, Ajay Kumar Kapur and Manoj Mittal, DMDs, SIDBI, while summarising the performance of the Bank during FY 2017, touched upon the numerous strategic initiatives undertaken by the Bank to fill in the various financial and non-financial gaps in the MSME eco-system.

SIDBI has been constantly striving to augment credit flow to the MSME sector through various strategic initiatives, said SIDBI. As a part of its strategy to partner with other lenders for providing financial assistance to MSMEs, SIDBI entered into MoUs with Vijaya Bank and Capital Small Finance Bank Ltd.

In recent months, a number of Small Finance Banks (SFBs) started operations which are expected to focus in lending to MSEs. Nearly all of the entities converting into SFBs, have received support from SIDBI in their early period and growth. SIDBI will continue to play the same role in their growth as SFBs.

SIDBI has also been playing a key role by supporting GoI schemes like Make in India, Startup India, Standup India, MUDRA and so on.

In order to encourage innovations and to provide growth push to MSMEs, SIDBI has been providing equity/risk capital assistance directly through Start-up Assistance and Growth Capital schemes (total sanction of `1,107 crore to 575 MSMEs) as well as indirectly, through Fund of Funds (FoFs) operations. Till March 31, 2017 an amount of `3,521 crore has been committed under FoFs to 125 VC funds/ AIFs.

SIDBI has been a pioneer in promoting energy efficiency in the MSME sector, as well as a pioneer of MFI-led micro finance culture by nurturing and strengthening more than 100 MFIs. Its assistance to MFIs has aggregated `12,714 crore by way of equity, quasi-equity and term loans benefitting more than 356 lakh persons, majority of them being women.

The Bank has been providing a number of promotional and developmental supports like rural industrialization, entrepreneurship development, skill up-gradation, marketing support, financial literacy, credit advisory services, cluster development, etc. These promotional and developmental supports of SIDBI have helped in setting up of more than 80,000 units, created 1.5 lakh employment and benefitted more than 2.3 lakh people in the MSME sector.

Over the years, SIDBI had emerged as an ‘institutions builder’ to strengthen the MSME eco-system to address their varied needs. The bank has set up SVCL to provide Venture Capital and growth capital to promote knowledge-based MSMEs, MUDRA for upscaling of ‘funding the unfunded’, SMERA to provide comprehensive, transparent ratings to MSMEs, ISARC for quicker resolution of NPAs in MSME sector and ISTSL to offer technology, advisory and consultancy services for Energy Efficiency and other projects.