NSDC, LetsEndorse announce strategic partnership to create micro/ nano entrepreneurs across India

New Delhi : With an aim to support Skill India Mission, National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) and LetsEndorse have entered a strategic partnership to create a mass and rapid micro/ nano-entrepreneurship movement across India through a tech-and-touch model developed by the latter.

The collaboration will impact the lives of rural and urban individuals looking to set up new enterprises or scale-up their existing ventures in more than 165 segments, across manufacturing, services, trading and new-age digital entrepreneurship. LetsEndorse’s Udyamita model, which has shown promising results in enabling micro/ nano entrepreneurs till the last mile through its 100-day intervention, will be leveraged in this partnership as well. The tech-enabled model assures scalability and provides end-to-end support to foster enterprise success and sustainable income, from idea building, business plan creation, enabling affordable credit under various government schemes and Reserve Bank of India (RBI) norms to mentorship after the enterprise is set-up.

The two organisations will work towards the goal of boosting entrepreneurial capacities, enabling access to affordable Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) capital and ensuring overall micro-enterprise success at scale pan-India.

Announcing the partnership, Ved Mani Tiwari, Chief Operating Officer (& Officiating CEO), National Skill Development Corporation said, “This partnership is aligned to the objectives of Skill India to create a skilled workforce, empowering them to become entrepreneurs. It is our constant endeavour to skill manpower from across the country and enable sustainable livelihoods. Entrepreneurship is one of the crucial pillars in that journey. NSDC’s collaboration with LetsEndorse will create an impactful framework and democratize micro-entrepreneurship till the last mile.”

It is aiming to enable 10,000 enterprises in 2022, leading to livelihoods for 30,000 people directly. In addition to improved enterprise success, repayment of loans and enhanced capacity as entrepreneurs, a 50% reduction in cost of financing for micro/ nano enterprises is one of the notable impacts.

Monika Shukla, Co-founder & CEO, LetsEndorse Development said, “We believe that India has an opportunity to end poverty by 2030 in line with the Sustainable Development Goals, and building sustainable livelihoods is a powerful way to achieve that goal. Solving for livelihoods has a trickle-down impact on social challenges such as education, health, nutrition, sanitation, housing, among others. And creating impact at scale requires shifting the dynamics from a philanthropic/ welfare-led approach to a market-led approach where people develop the paying capacities for products and services. We are passionate about building sustainable livelihoods through micro-entrepreneurship and are excited to partner with NSDC to scale-up the reach of the model. We are looking at enabling over a million micro/nano entrepreneurs by 2027 and ten million entrepreneurs by 2030. UDITI, our horizontal platform solution for driving and delivering the Udyamita model has been developed over the last two years and we are looking at integrating it with DESH-Stack as well.”