Empowering Women Entrepreneurs: Stand-Up India and PM MUDRA Yojana

Women in our country are capable of doing anything when provided with opportunities. As India is growing rapidly, hopes, aspirations and expectations of women are also rising significantly.

• They want to move away from being job-seekers and become job-creators.

Challenges to Women Entrepreneurship

• Lack of access of fund
• Social neglect
• Non serious in providing fund
• Lack of network
• Balance between family and work life

Understanding the potential of these rising women entrepreneurs in driving economic growth and removing any bottlenecks in getting institutional credit, the Government of India has launched two major schemes –

1. Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana (PMMY), and
2. Stand-Up India.

Stand-Up India

• Stand-Up India aims to promote entrepreneurship amongst Women, Scheduled Castes (SC) & Scheduled Tribes (ST) categories and help them in starting a greenfield enterprise.
• Since the inception of the Stand-Up India scheme, Rs. 30160 crores has been sanctioned to 133,995 accounts (as on 21.03.2022).

PMMY

• It was launched for providing loans up to Rs. 10 Lakhs to non-corporate, non-farm small/micro enterprises.
• As on March 25, 2022, more than 34.42 crore loans for an amount of Rs 18.60 lakh crores have been sanctioned since the launch of PMMY.
• The participation of women is increasing continuously in the growth cycle of New India. Both these schemes have promoted the entrepreneurship culture at the grassroots-level focusing on economic empowerment and job creation.