One day ‘BizAmp’ held at Agri Expo

Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) in association with NSIC Venture Capital Fund Limited, organised “BizAmp- Amplifying businesses of Northeast region through SRI Fund”, on Thursday, at Agri Expo Hall, Chümoukedima, with secretary, ministry of MSME, government of India, BB Swain, as the chief guest.
Addressing the gathering, Swain stated that the Self Reliant India (SRI) Fund was an attempt by the ministry to get more MSMEs and entrepreneurs to benefit from the fund, which had done remarkably well. He also expressed his appreciation on acquiring 42 daughter funds after only 18 months of starting in the region.
Speaking on the presence of significant credit and equity gap in MSME sector, he stated that the SRI fund was essentially created to deal with the concept of equity gap.
He also added that the ministry has been looking into the equity funding which was going to the MSMEs, also that many financings had gone to business houses in Mumbai, Gujarat, and Bangalore, which had obviously more takers.
Swain expressed hope that the panel discussion session would benefit representatives and make them fit enough to be investors and that the program should be the beginning of this activity and keep on expanding such activities.
He however added there were still many spaces left to be covered, and thereby appealed the representatives to spread, keep going and to identify the scheme and focus, so as to utilize the scheme and come up with more targets.
He also spoke on MBM VIKAS to be launched in September, which would target the smallest sector, including handicap, those in pottery, carpentry, etc., looking into around 120 trades.
He noted that this will be first time the central government would bring in a scheme that would deal in an end to end kind of service, starting with credits, guarantors, tooling, training, etc.
Terming entrepreneurs as the “bravest people” who take risks, and create jobs for people of the country, Swain lauded the entrepreneurs.
Delivering a short speech, CEO & director, NVCFL, Saravana Kumar, spoke on how the eight North Eastern states would benefit through the SRI Fund.
He noted that the SRI Fund’s BIZ AMP event at Dimapur was aimed at promoting entrepreneurship opportunities for MSMEs in the North-East Region.
Kumar added that NER has huge business opportunities in sectors such as tourism, bamboo and rubber cultivation, medicinal plant extraction & related to health care sector, pharmaceuticals, handloom, muga silk weaving, wool spinning & textiles, coir processing, honey bee manufacturing, floriculture, horticulture, sericulture, coffee & tea production, ethanol, sugar manufacturing, spices, pulp & paper, wine manufacturing, malt production, wooden products, furniture making, footwear, chemicals manufacturing, fruit processing, bidis manufacturing, candle making, fishery, poultry, piggery, animal husbandry, handicrafts, personal care products, food processing, frozen food manufacturing, green energy production, retail sector, education, travel sector, plastics manufacturing, IT/ IT enabled services, etc.
He maintained that the government of India had launched SRI fund with an outlay corpus of Rs. 10, 006 crore, concentrated towards financing an infusion of capital of MSMEs through daughter funds.
He further added that the SRI fund managed by NVCFL is an Alternative Investment Fund (AFI) providing growth capital to MSMEs through equity/ quasi-equity/ equity-like structured instruments. “As on March 31, 2023, the fund has made a capital commitment of Rs. 5,120 crore to 42 empanelled daughter funds”, he added.
Eearlier, the programme was chaired by Gugu Haralu, welcome address delivered by NSIC CMD, chairperson, NVCFL, & jt secretary, MSME, Mercy Epao and keynote address delivered by addl development commissioner, ministry of MSME, Dr Ihita Ganguli Tripathy.