Origins of Start-up Village Entrepreneurship Programme (SVEP)

The successful demonstration of proof of concept in pilot locations of KS-NRO’s MEC project contributed to the universalization of the concept of Micro-Enterprise Consultants in India in the form of Government of India’s Start-up Village Entrepreneurship Programme. Kudumbashree-NRO is accredited as one of the NROs to provide support in the implementation of SVEP to interested States.

About SVEP

The SVEP, a sub scheme under the NRLM, is being implemented through States to promote to start-up enterprises in rural areas. SVEP supports the rural start-up entrepreneurs by training them to choose the right enterprise to start and run, making available loans through SHGs for starting the enterprise and subsequently linking them to banks for additional funds for expansion and supporting them for the initial six months of its business to ensure sustainability of the enterprise.SVEP aims to support 1.82 lakh entrepreneurs in 125 Blocks in 29 States over 4 years at an estimated cost of Rs.484 crore.

Under SVEP, a pool of block level community cadre – Community Resource Person for Enterprise Promotion (CRP-EP) - will be trained in business management to support the rural poor to set up their enterprises and handhold them in the initial six months of start-up. SVEP entails building the capacity of NRLM and SHG federations to monitor the work of CRP-EPs. It also has provisions for the use of integrated ICT techniques and tools for training and capacity building, enterprise advisory services and to provide loans to rural entrepreneurs from the NRLM SHGs and federations and the banking system including the MUDRA bank.

SVEP intends to fill in the gaps of a missing knowledge ecosystem (exposure to new ideas, soft skills for triggering, lack of domain skills, etc.), a missing incubation system (personalized advisory, feasibility intelligence, common startup pitfalls, etc.) and a missing finance eco-system (customized need based finance, financial linkage, on-going handholding), to address the obstacles faced by first generation entrepreneurs.

NRLM Resource / Intensive Block will be the unit of implementation for SVEP. Under SVEP a Block Resource Centre for Entrepreneurship Promotion (BRC-EP) will be setup to occupy the trained CRP-EP. There is a provision for Community Enterprise Fund (CEF) for supporting enterprises.

Project Locations

Currently, KS-NRO is supporting SVEP implementation in 15 blocks across Bihar, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Kerala.

Project Footprint (as of January 2017)

No. of Partner-States : 4

No. of Blocks : 15

No. of MEC : 277

No. of Mentors : 17