Arun Jaitley launches two funds by SIDBI

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday launched two funds by Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), a fund of funds with total corpus of Rs 12,000 crore. The funds are Rs 2,000-crore India Aspiration Fund (IAF) and SIDBI Make In India Loan For Enterprises (SMILE) scheme with an investment size of Rs 10,000 crore. "India is witnessing a start-up revolution and to harness the potential of India's innovators and entrepreneurs a vibrant financial ecosystem is essential. The IAF is intended to play a vital role in this financial ecosystem," Jaitley said. "The fund is expected to catalyse tens of thousands of crores of equity investment in start-ups and MSMEs. The insurance behemoth Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) has also agreed to be a partner and co-investor in the fund," he added.

"Various important initiatives taken by the government was sanguine that Make In India initiative with a conducive financial ecosystem will make India a manufacturing hub very soon," the minister added. "Fund amounting to Rs 20,000 crore has been sanctioned by the MUDRA Bank and we are targeting to take it to Rs 1 trillion," Jaitley said. The idea behind the launch of SMILE scheme is to provide soft loans in the nature of quasi-equity and term loans on relatively soft terms to MSMEs to meet the required debt-equity ratio norm as also for pursuing opportunities of growth by existing MSMEs, a SIBDI release said.