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Investment initiative to help distressed SMEs
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SME Times News Bureau | 08 Jul, 2020
The Wadhwani Foundation (WF) has
committed an investment of Rs 200 crore to help distressed small and
medium enterprises (SMEs) affected by Covid-19-induced economic crisis
and public health workers to improve COVID-19 knowledge and skills.
Wadhwani
Foundation on Wednesday said it is building an ecosystem of partners,
including government ministries and agencies, banks, and consulting
firms, to help operationalise this large and complex initiative called
"Sahayata".
The Sahayata initiative consists of three
programmes -- the Sahayata Business Stability programme -- that will
provide up to 10,000 SMEs with transformational business consulting
equipping them with the expertise necessary to survive, stabilise and
grow.
Second is the Sahayata Covid-19 skilling programme that
aims to initially skill 5,000 existing and new public health workers per
month and increasing to 50,000 per month, ultimately serving 500,000 to
one million existing and new health workers.
The third is the
Sahayata Public Health Innovation programme that will provide innovation
grants or investments to up to 50 startups and early-stage companies to
help accelerate innovation in public health technology in India.
Each award will be between Rs 25 lakh to Rs 1 crore, the non-profit foundation said.
"Covid-19
has created both a health and an economic crisis that is especially
harming SMEs and jobs. Without proper credit and consulting support, the
short- and long-term damage to the SME sector will be enormous," Romesh
Wadhwani, Founder and Chairman, Wadhwani Foundation, said in a
statement.
"The Foundation's large investment in Sahayata
supplements the government's massive stimulus package by providing
10,000 SMEs with consulting services that will help them survive,
stabilise, and ultimately grow into successful businesses and help save
or create 100,000 jobs."
The foundation said it has built all
three Sahayata programmes over the last 90 days and the rapid deployment
will begin in August 2020.
"Wadhwani Foundation has signed
partnerships with SIDBI, Clix Capital, IIFL Finance, Power2SME, and
Magma Fincorp to select the SMEs for this programme, jointly. Starting
in August 2020, this Sahayata programme will sign up 50 SMEs per month,
increasing progressively to 500 SMEs per month," said Ajay Kela,
President and CEO, Wadhwani Foundation.
Wadhwani Foundation said
it will launch Sahayata in Mexico in August 2020 and plans to expand the
program to Brazil early in 2021 and in Africa and Southeast Asia
(Indonesia, the Philippines and Bangladesh) in mid-2021.
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