“Small Business Loans Initiative” is a new program that has been announced by Facebook India. This program is in partnership with online lending platform Indifi that would help small and medium businesses (SMBs) advertisements on Facebook to get quick access to credit through independent lending partners.
India is going to be a first country where Facebook is taking this initiative step to promote small and medium business (SMBs). It is open to registered businesses in 200 cities and towns of India. Under this scheme, small and medium businesses can avail loans ranging from Rs 5 to Rs 50 lakh.
Indifi will be the first lending partner that Facebook has tied up with and the program is designed with the potential to attract more partners.
The technology giant said that the purpose of the program is to make business loans more easily available to small businesses and to reduce the gap of credit within India’s MSME sector.
According to the “Future of Business” survey regulated by Facebook in collaboration with the World Bank and OECD last year, nearly a third of operational SMBs on Facebook in 2020 said that expected cash flow to be one of their main challenges. The main challenge for micro and small businesses that have just started out, is of getting access to timely credit.
Ajit Mohan, Vice President & Managing Director, Facebook India said, “Facebook is deeply committed to creating economic opportunities for India’s small businesses. Access to timely capital is more important than ever as it can help them jump-start their recovery and drive big growth...As a company, we are at the spear end of the digital transformation and we believe that the Small Business Loans Initiative can provide big impetus to early entrepreneurs to fuel their ideas and their appetite for taking risks”.
The program was announced at a virtual event "Enabling MSME Growth through Financial Inclusion," hosted by Facebook India in partnership with Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI).
Uday Shankar, President, FICCI said, “FICCI lauds Facebook efforts of empowering the MSME sector with the right opportunities, skills, and solutions. FICCI has always advocated for stronger private sector participation for the growth of India’s MSMEs and welcomes the launch of Facebook's Small Business Loans Initiative to make access to credit more easily available to the industry”.
