PM SVANidhi Scheme: Zomato to tie up with 300 street vendors in 6 cities

New Delhi: Online food ordering platform Zomato on Thursday announced that it will tie up with  street food vendors across 6 cities of India under the Prime Minister Street Vendor''s AtmaNibhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) scheme.

An exchange of MoU was signed between Mission Director, PM SVANidhi in the Ministry and Vice President of Zomato.

As per the Mou, Zomato will launch a pilot product with 300 street food vendors in 6 cities --Bhopal, Raipur, Patna, Vadodara, Nagpur and Ludhiana.
Zomato will provide PAN and FSSAI registrations, digitised menu, fix prices, train and certify vendors in food safety and hygiene, packaging, presentation and use of Zomato App, as part of the training process. It has been learnt that Zomato will upscale to 125 cities.

In December last year, Swiggy announced the expansion of its street food vendors program to 125 cities under the PM SVANidhi scheme. In the first phase, the company will onboard 36,000 street food vendors to whom the loan has been disbursed in 125 cities on its platform, Swiggy said in a statement.

What is PM SVANidhi Scheme?

The PM SVANidhi Scheme was launched under the ambit of ‘AtmaNirbhar Bharat Abhiyan’. It aims at facilitating collateral free working capital loans upto Rs 10,000 of 1 year tenure, to about 50 lakh street vendors in the urban areas, including those from the surrounding peri-urban/ rural areas, to resume their businesses post COVID-19 lockdown. Incentives in the form of interest subsidy of 7% per annum on regular repayment of loan, cashback upto Rs 1,200 per annum on undertaking prescribed digital transactions and eligibility for enhanced next tranche of loan have also been provided.

PM SVANidhi Scheme envisages bringing ‘Banks at the door steps’ of these ‘nano-entrepreneurs’ by engaging the Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs) and the Micro-Finance Institutions (MFIs) as lending institutions in addition to Scheduled Commercial Banks - Public & Private, Regional Rural Banks, Cooperative Banks, SHG Banks etc. The onboarding of the vendors on digital payment platforms is a very important component to build the credit profile of the vendors to help them become part of the formal urban economy.

Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) is the implementation partner for the scheme. A graded guarantee cover is provided, on portfolio basis, to these lending institutions through Credit Guarantee Fund Trust for Micro and Small Enterprises (CGTMSE) to encourage lending to street vendors.

The street vendors mostly operate their businesses on very thin margins. The micro-credit support under the scheme is expected to provide not only major relief to such vendors but also help them climb the economic ladder. Use of an integrated IT Platform (pmsvanidhi.mohua.org.in), Web Portal and Mobile App, has enabled the Scheme to extend its reach and benefits to this segment of society with the objective of minimum government and maximum governance.