EDII to create 36,000 rural enterprises under Start-up Village Entrepreneurship Programme
New Delhi: Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDII), an acknowledged national resource Institute for Entrepreneurship Education, Research, Training and Institution Building has boosted rural livelihood and employment in village under Start-up Village Entrepreneurship Programme (SVEP), a sub-scheme of National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM), Ministry of Rural Development. The Institute has created over 7,600 rural enterprises under SVEP in last two years. SVEP is dedicated to create sustainable self-employment opportunities for a large number of youth residing in the villages. It also works towards bringing banks and financial institutions closer to the village entrepreneurs.
Selected as National Resource Organisation (NRO), the Institute aims to create around 36,000 rural enterprises by March 31, 2021 under five-year SVEP, which started in 2015-16. The Institute has implemented SVEP in across 42 blocks across states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Jammu & Kashmir, West Bengal, Odisha, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. The Institute has so far assisted in getting credit linkage to the tune of Rs. 21.2 crore for providing funds to rural enterprises.
Explaining about the scale of the project, Dr. Sunil Shukla, Director, EDII said, “In its first phase of validating the concept, SVEP is expected to support creation and strengthening of about 1.82 lakh village enterprises in 125 Blocks across 24 States in the targeted five years i.e. 2015-16 to 2020-21. This is expected to create employment for about 3.78 lakh persons. EDII’s aim is to create around 36,000 rural enterprises in first phase of 5 years.”
“Micro-enterprises constitute a significant proportion of the existing unregistered enterprises in the country. The purpose of SVEP is to bring majority of these micro-enterprises in the main stream and assist them in funding their business model, which is scalable and can generate rural employment. Through SVEP, these enterprises are provided training and adequate business skills so as to ensure their long-term survival and sustainable employment generation,” he said.
In order to solve problem of credit linkages to rural enterprises and generate rural livelihood, Finance Minister had initiated the idea of SVEP in 2014-15, with project being launched in 2015-16. For 2018-19, the Government has targeted to create 25,000 rural enterprises and provide skilling to 4 lakh trainees under SVEP according to budget documents.