Budget 2025 For Startups: Rs 2 Crore Loans - All You Need To Know

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the Union Budget on February 1, 2025 at 11 am in the Parliament of India.
Among other measures, she announced a new scheme wherein a select group of people will get term loans upto Rs 2 Crore.

Entrepreneurship Support : Sitharaman's Statement

Sitharaman announced, a "New scheme for 5 lakh women, SC, ST. First-time entrepreneurs to get term loans up to Rs 2 crore. 

The scheme will incorporate lessons from the successful Standup India scheme"

A new 'Fund of Funds' for startups is to be set up by the government, its features include:

1. Fresh contribution of another Rs 10,000 crore, in addition to existing government contribution of Rs 10,000 crore

2. New Scheme for 5 lakh Women, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes first-time entrepreneurs

Why Do We Need The Scheme?

India ranks 129 in the Global Gender Gap report released by the World Economic Forum (WEF), in Economic Participation and Opportunity subindex. 

The move can possibly help India climb up the index. 

As per WEF, "While India’s economic parity score has trended upwards for the past four editions, it would need a further 6.2 percentage

points to match its 2012 score of 46%. Achieving that objective will be possible through bridging gender gaps in estimated earned income (28.6%);

legislative, senior officials, and management roles (14.4%); labour-force participation rate (45.9%); and professional and technical workers (49.4%)."

This initiative could possibly be a step towards labour equalisation.

As per IFC report, "There are about 15 million women-owned MSMEs in India, over 70 percent of which are manufacturing enterprises. 

In addition to the challenges mentioned earlier, women entrepreneurs seeking to scale-up their businesses

need to overcome biases from within the family and also in the business community. 

About 90 percent of the women entrepreneurs in India have not availed finance from formal FIs."