Government Joins Hands With Swiggy To Take Street Food Vendors Online Under 'PM Svanidhi Scheme'

Empowering street vendors with digital technology and to facilitate greater earning opportunities, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) has entered into an MoU with Swiggy, the leading food ordering and delivery platform in India.

As part of the Prime Minister Street Vendor’s Atmanirbhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) Scheme, the initiative aims to put onboard street food vendors on its ecommerce platform, giving them online access to thousands of consumers.

During the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, where physical distancing is the key to check its spread, this novel scheme is expected to radically transform the business of street vendors across cities, so they can receive orders online and serve customers.

In a first-of-its-kind initiative, the MoHUA has coordinated with key stakeholders including municipal corporations, FSSAI, Swiggy and GST officials to ensure that the necessary prerequisites are completed for this initiative.

To begin with, MoHUA and Swiggy will run a pilot programme by on-boarding 250 vendors across five cities namely Ahmedabad, Chennai, Delhi, Indore, and Varanasi.

The street vendors will be helped with PAN and FSSAI registration, training on technology/partner app usage, menu digitisation and pricing, hygiene and packaging best practices.

Upon the successful completion of the pilot, MoHUA and Swiggy plan to expand this initiative across the country in phases.

This partnership is seen as yet another move by MoHUA to empower street vendors with digital technology and facilitate greater income-earning opportunities by being present on a popular ecommerce platform like Swiggy.

The MoU was exchanged by Joint Secretary Sanjay Kumar and Chief Financial Officer, Swiggy, Rahul Bothra, through a webinar in the presence of Secretary, Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs Durga Shanker Mishra and officials of Swiggy and the Ministry.

Municipal Commissioners of Ahmedabad, Chennai, Delhi, Indore, and Varanasi also participated in the ceremony through videoconferencing.

During the ceremony, Secretary, HUA, also launched the updated and modified version of PM SVANidhi Dashboard, which facilitates users not only with a better granular view of the scheme’s performance, but also with additional tools for comparisons.

The Ministry is implementing PM SVANidhi Scheme since 1 June 2020, for providing affordable working capital loans to street vendors to resume their livelihoods, which have been adversely affected due to Covid-19 lockdown.

This scheme hopes to benefit over 50 lakh street vendors who had been vending on or before 24 March, 2020, in urban areas, including those from surrounding peri-urban/ rural areas.

Under the scheme, vendors can avail of a working capital loan of up to Rs 10,000, which is repayable in monthly instalments within one year. \

On timely/early repayment of loan, an interest subsidy at the rate of 7 per cent per annum will be credited to the bank accounts of the beneficiaries through Direct Benefit Transfer on quarterly basis.

There will be no penalty on early repayment of loan.

The scheme promotes digital transactions through cash-back incentives up to an amount of Rs 1,200 per annum.

The vendors can fulfill their aspiration of climbing up the economic ladder by availing of the facility of enhanced credit limit on timely/early repayment of loan.

As on 4 October 2020, over 20 lakh loan applications have been received under the PM SVANidhi Scheme.

Out of these, over 7.5 lakh loans have been sanctioned and over 2.4 lakh loans disbursed.