The Small Industries Development Bank of India (Sidbi) will be raising the proposed Rs 10,000-crore corpus for ‘Stand Up India Fund’ from RBI, which will be disbursed to Dalit and women entrepreneurs. Sidbi Chairman and Managing Director Kshatrapati Shivaji said “We are working to have the corpus in place for the Stand Up India Fund corpus. It will be raised from the Reserve Bank through the priority sector lending shortfalls“.

Under the scheme announced by Prime Minister NarendraModi earlier this year, each bank branch has been mandated to lend to one micro-enterprise promoted by a woman and SC/ST entrepreneur.

Sidbi is currently working on four new credit guarantee funds, apart from the already operational Credit Guarantee Fund Trust for Micro and Small Enterprises which gives a cover of up to Rs 1 crore for MSME loans. Sidbi depends on a variety of instruments to raise resources, including certificate of deposits, commercial papers, non-convertible debentures and credit lines from external agencies.

Apart from these, Sidbi has set up a Rs 1,000 crore ‘Make in India Fund’ to refinance bank loans to the manufacturing sector.  It has also committed Rs 300 crore of the Rs 10,000 crore ‘Smile Fund’ for small businesses announced earlier this year as part of the Start-Up India initiative.