More women don business hat, female entrepreneurs account for 19 pc of MSMEs on Udyam portal

New Delhi, Mar 13 (FN Bureau) More and more women seem to be donning the entrepreneurial hat with the latest official data showing that nearly 19% MSMEs registered on Udyam portal are led by women. “More than 1.47 crore MSMEs are registered on the Udyam Registration portal. The share of women-led enterprises in the total MSMEs is nearly 19%,” Minister of State for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Bhanu Pratap Singh Verma said in a written reply in Rajya Sabha on Monday. The Minister said that the government has taken a lot of measures to promote women entrepreneurship in the country.

The action steps include providing skill development training to women, mandating PSUs to procure from women entrepreneurs and extending support under credit guarantee scheme. As per the official data, loans to the tune of Rs 58,237.25 crore for as many as 14,34,079 women-led MSMEs have received guarantee cover under Credit Guarantee Fund Trust for Micro and Small Enterprises (CGTMSE) as on February 2023. Under Udyam registration portal since its inception, a total of 27.17 lakh women-owned MSMEs have been registered till March 9, 2023. The states which have seen higher women-led MSMEs getting registered on Udyam portal include Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Bulk of these entrepreneurs are in the micro category. “Special drives for registration of women owned MSMEs under Udyam Registration Portal have been undertaken during 2022-23 and more than 2 lakh women owned MSMEs registered on the portal during the special drives,” the Minister said.