36,000 rural enterprises coming up in 5 years under Start-up Village Entrepreneurship Programme, thanks to EDII

Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDII), an acknowledged national resource institute for entrepreneurship education, research, training and institution building, has contributed a lot to boost rural enterprises and village start-ups.

Selected as National Resource Organisation (NRO), the Institute has created over 7,600 rural enterprises under the Start-up Village Entrepreneurship Programme (SVEP) in the last two years.

HOW THE SVEP IS CREATING VILLAGE START-UPS

-The SVEP is a sub-scheme of National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM), Ministry of Rural Development

-The 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

-The Finance Minister had initiated the idea of SVEP in 2014-15 in order to solve problem of credit linkages to rural enterprises and generate rural livelihood

-The project was 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

"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." explained Dr. Sunil Shukla, Director, EDII.

RURAL ENTERPRISES STRUGGLE TO COME INTO MAINSTREAM

"Micro-enterprises constitute a significant proportion of the existing unregistered enterprises in the country," said Shukla, speaking about the large number of small-scale businesses in rural areas which face trouble getting credit and thus, cannot come into the mainstream.

"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," he adds.

"Through SVEP, these enterprises are provided training and adequate business skills so as to ensure their long-term survival and sustainable employment generation."

WHAT DOES THE EDII AIM TO DO?

-The institute aims to create around 36,000 rural enterprises by March 31, 2021 under five-year SVEP, which started in 2015-16

-It 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

-EDII successfully assisted in getting credit linkage of Rs. 21.2 crore for providing funds to rural enterprises

EDII AND ITS MISSION TO DEVELOP ENTREPRENEURSHIP

-Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDII) is an acclaimed International Resource Centre facilitating all facets of Entrepreneurship Development

-EDII's mission is to be a catalyst in facilitating the emergence of competent first-generation entrepreneurs and transition of existing SMEs into growth-oriented enterprises through entrepreneurship education, training, research and institution-building

-EDII is an autonomous and not-for-profit institute, set up in 1983, and is sponsored by apex financial institutions -- the IDBI Bank Ltd, IFCI Ltd, ICICI Bank Ltd and the State Bank of India (SBI)

-The Government of Gujarat pledged 23 acres of land on which stands the majestic and sprawling EDII campus. To pursue its mission, EDII has helped set up 12 state-level exclusive Entrepreneurship Development Centres and institutes

-One of the satisfying achievements, however, was taking entrepreneurship to a large number of schools, colleges, science and technology institutions, and management schools in several states by including entrepreneurship inputs in their curricula.