Nirmala Sitharaman Launches Indian Bank's 'MSME Prerana' to Empower MSMEs

Financial service lender, Indian Bank has introduced ‘MSME Prerana’, an online business mentoring program for MSMEs. The banks claim this program to be the first-of-its-kind across the country for the MSME sector.

The program has been officially launched by Union Minister of Finance & Corporate Affairs, Nirmala Sitharaman at the bank’s headquarters in Chennai. The bank has taken this initiative to empower the entrepreneurs by offering them skill development and capacity building workshops in their local language. Although, the program has been launched in association with Poornatha & Co, an organization the offers online entrepreneurial development programs in vernacular languages. These programs are offer web-based interactive sessions and case studies.

Padmaja Chunduru, MD & CEO, Indian Bank says, “During the outreach programs, webinars and interaction with our MSME units, one main takeaway was that there is still a lot of dependence on chartered accountants or agents for these units to access bank loans and scale up their operations. The barrier was language, it was the jargon, the confusion about what the bank looks for when they approach loans, how to manage cash flows, which schemes of government are available and suitable to them and how to register themselves for these. Many units were remaining in the micro or small sector, despite opportunities to scale up due to the apprehension about the tax burden.”

Appreciating the bank’s initiative in empowering MSMEs, Nirmala Sitharaman has stated that this program would aid in handhold the entrepreneurs through its mentoring programs. Furthermore, this program would also inspire other players in the banking sector to think out-of-the-box and come up with such innovative measures.

MSME Prerana program offers more than 12 sessions that would help the MSME entrepreneurs to expertise in handling finance and managerial skills, understand the dynamics credit rating and risk management, capacity to handle crises in business. Moreover, Poornatha would be handling the session on managerial and financial skills, while the banking related topics would be handled by the Indian Bank faculties. Additionally, all the participants would get a certificate on completing the program that would be issued jointly by Indian Bank, Poornatha& Co, and MADE (Michigan Academy for Developing Entrepreneurs), US.

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