Delhi, August 4th 2024, The Credit Guarantee Fund Trust for Micro and Small Enterprises (CGTMSE) partnered with Rizing, a cutting-edge entrepreneurial information network that delves into business, finance, and technology, to host The Rizing Equality Entrepreneurship Forum – The Delhi Chapter.
Supported by Blockchain solutions provider Qila and IDBI Bank, this event took place at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi on the 25th of July 2024.
Following the success of the Rizing Equality Summit 2024 in Mumbai in February 2024, the Delhi Chapter marks the second event of this series. Rizing plans to extend this series across India to foster smart and meaningful discussions nationwide. The forum gathered a mix of MSME professionals, investors and other stakeholders at the heart of India’s economy: Delhi. It served as a platform to highlight the pivotal role of MSMEs/startups as the unsung heroes and silent engines of growth, innovation and job creation in India.
The event’s agenda featured sessions including an entrepreneurial resilience panel, Direct-To-Consumer (D2C) strategies, fundraising insights and institutional credit facilitation for MSEs. The lineup also included workshops on Blockchain, legal issues and banking solutions.
Prominent speakers like Sandeep Varma of the CGTMSE, Siddharth Ugrankar of Qila and Suresh S of IDBI Bank, along with leaders from Soonicorn Ventures, Ankur Capital, Fireside Ventures, Process9, ValuAble, GetVantage and more were present at the event. A special mentorship pitch session allowed MSMEs/startups to present their business plans with successful pitches gaining eligibility for collateral-free loan guarantees from the CGTMSE.
Sandeep Varma, CEO – CGTMSE, emphasizes, “Collateral unavailability has always been a problem for small-scale entrepreneurs to kickstart their venture and it has increasingly become a big bottleneck for bankers in providing loans to this segment. With the backing of the CGTMSE in India, if any loans to MSEs become bad, then as a guarantee, the CGTMSE would provide 75%-85% coverage of the loan to the lender in lieu of collateral security”.
Established by the Ministry of MSME, Government of India, and SIDBI, the CGTMSE aims to catalyze the flow of institutional credit to MSEs, enhancing credit delivery systems and broadening finance access to include underserved and underprivileged & bolster availability of finance from conventional lenders to new-gen entrepreneurs. Since its inception, the CGTMSE is said to have been instrumental in providing guarantee cover to collateral and/or third-party guarantee-free credit facilities extended by eligible Member Lending Institutions (MLIs) to MSEs.
Rizing is a new-age and inclusive entrepreneurial information network that aims to be the true mirror reflecting Indian business, finance and technology in the expanse of not just Asia, but also, the global stage. Crafted for the intellectually curious, it explores the tenets that could help India become a $5 trillion economy: capital, innovation, technology, ESG, sustainability, policy and more.
Qila is a Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform that aims to help businesses adopt Blockchain and crypto technologies to secure their business needs by minting non-fungible tokens for real-world physical or digital assets on a private blockchain network.
According to Shrija Agrawal, Founder – Rizing, “The Government of India has recognized that for the country to skyrocket to become a $5 trillion economy by 2027, the MSME sector is the fiery fuel that can help turbocharge this ambition”.
“The constraints related to finance, networking, skill development and access to technology seem to, also, impact women entrepreneurs in the MSME space, yet they constitute about 20% of the total registered MSMEs in India. While that’s a number that can drastically improve, with the CGTMSE, women-owned MSMEs could be further bolstered to contribute to India’s employment and make their mark. And Rizing wants to arm them with meaningful and tangible insights as well to take their business to the next level”, declares Agrawal.
