Startup Village Entrepreneurship Programme (SVEP)

About Startup Village Entrepreneurship Programme:

• The SVEP is implemented by Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana –National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM), Ministry of Rural Development, as a sub-scheme since 2016.
• Its aims are to support the rural poor come out of poverty, supporting them set up enterprises and provide support till the enterprises stabilize.
• SVEP focuses on providing self-employment opportunities with financial assistance and training in business management and soft skills while creating local community cadres for promotion of enterprises.
• It addresses three major pillars of rural start-ups namely – finances, incubation and skill ecosystems.

Vision and Scope

The long term vision of the SVEP is to provide support for start-up to 1 crore village enterprises and provide direct employment to 2 crore people. The SVEP shall help the rural poor come out of poverty by helping them set up enterprises and provide support till the enterprises stabilize. The programmatic intervention will address all three missing ecosystems – Knowledge, advisory and finance ecosystems.

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 four years i.e. 2015-19. This is expected to create employment for about 3.78 lakh persons.

Objectives

The overall objective of SVEP is to implement the Government’s efforts to stimulate economic growth and reduce poverty and unemployment in the villages by helping start and support rural enterprises.

The key objectives of SVEP are:

• To enable rural poor to set up their enterprises, in its proof of concept phase, by developing a sustainable model for Village Entrepreneurship promotion through integrated ICT techniques and tools for training and capacity building, enterprise advisory services and to provide loans from banks/SHG & federations. These enterprises may be individual or group enterprises and should cover manufacturing, services and trading. These enterprises should cover traditional skills as well as new skills. They should also cover existing consumption and production of rural areas and should also cover new consumption and production of the rural areas, including the new consumption driven by government’s priorities like RURBAN mission, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, etc.
• Develop local resources by training a pool of village level community cadre (CRP EP) and build the capacity of the NRLM and SHG federations to monitor and direct the work of the CRP-EPs.
• Help the rural entrepreneurs to access finance for starting their enterprises from the NRLM SHG and federations, the banking systems including the proposed MUDRA bank.
• Handhold the rural entrepreneurs/ enterprises in the initial six months of start-up, with visits from the CRP-EP’s supported by guidance from an advisory panel of experts for the relevant enterprise.

The SVEP would also work with the input and output supply chains for farm produce, artisanal products and other goods & services to help increase rural incomes.

Beneficiaries

Any Rural poor who is willing to be entrepreneurial and self reliant is eligible to be part of this programme. Highly vulnerable beneficiaries under MGNREGA, marginalized sections, women, SC and ST communities and rural artisans will be given specific preference in selection, as part of this programme.

Implementation

The NRLM SHG’s and federations are a critical pre-requisite for the implementation of the SVEP project. These community based institutions provide help in the identification of the potential entrepreneurs and the common resource persons (CRP EP)s, help in doing the due diligence for their credit worthiness and also monitor the work of the Community Resource Persons (CRP-EP’s). Post the starting of the enterprise and providing credit to it, the community based institutions also monitor the progress of the enterprise and its repayment along with the CRP-EP.

Implementation of SVEP shall be managed by NRLM through the State Rural Livelihood Missions.

Key elements of the programme

• Create a Block Resource Centre – Enterprise Promotion (BRC-EP); The BRC should act as a nodal centre to implement SVEP. Block Level Federation (BLF) to come up under NRLM could be one of institutional platforms for BRC.
• Cluster Level Federation (CLF) /VOs shallhold the entity till BLF comes into existence. BRC should follow a self-sustaining revenue model.
• BRC to be assisted by CRP-EP and the Bank Coordination System (Bank Mitra). BRC to provide resource and reference material including videos, manuals etc.
• Help enterprises get bank finance using tablet based software for making the business feasibility plan, doing credit appraisal and tracking business performance.
• Use the Community Investment Fund (CIF) to provide seed capital for starting the business till it reaches a size where bank finance is needed.
• SVEP implementation at the block level to consist of the following sets of processes:
  • New Enterprise Development
  • Support for existing enterprises
  • Block level activities
  • Other project activities

Source: Vikaspedia

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