MOHUA Inks MoU with Swiggy to Onboard Street Food Ventor to the e-Commerce Platform


MOHUA Inks MoU with Swiggy to Onboard Street Food Ventor to the e-Commerce Platform

The Indian government has signed an MoU with food delivery firm Swiggy as a measure to onboard street food vendors to the e-commerce platform. This initiative has been taken by the government to bring a wider customer base to the street vendors.

To begin with, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MOUHA) and Swiggy would run a pilot program by on boarding about 250 vendors across five prominent cities- Chennai, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Indore, and Varanasi. Furthermore, the ministry has announced that the street vendors would be aided in acquiring PAN and FSSAI registration as well as be trained in the application usage, menu digitization, hygiene and packaging best practices, pricing, and more.

 As the pilot program successfully gets accomplished, a part of PM’s Street Vendor’s Atmanirbhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) scheme, would be further extended all over the country in different phases.

This initiative has been taken to aid the street food vendors to expand their business, who have witnessed severe hit due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As social distancing was imposed to keep the infection spread under control, this has drastically impacted these businesses thus, to facilitate them to get orders despite the restriction the government has introduced online business mode to the street vendors.

Under this program, the government would initially focus on a minimum of 50 lakh street vendors. These vendors would be offered a working capital loan of up to 10, 000 with a 12 months EMI scheme.

Furthermore, the Urban Housing Ministry would reward a seven percent interest subsidy per annum on the timely and early repayment of the loans. However, the subsidy would be credited to the bank accounts of the beneficiaries through Direct Benefit Transfer on a quarterly basis.

The MOHUA states that they have received more than 20 lakh loan applications under the PM SVANidhi Scheme. Out of these loan applications, about 7.5 lakh applicants have got their loans sanctioned while more than 2.4 lakh applicant’s loan has been disbursed.