NEW DELHI: Start-Up Village Entrepreneurship Programme (SVEP) is implemented by Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana –National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM), Ministry of Rural Development, as a sub-scheme since 2016.
With an objective to support the rural poor come out of poverty, supporting them setup enterprises and provide support till the enterprises stabilize, SVEP focusses on providing self-employment opportunities with financial assistance and training in business management and soft skills while creating local community cadres for promotion of enterprises.
SVEP addresses three major pillars of rural start-ups namely – finances, incubation, and skill ecosystems. Activities under SVEP are strategically designed to promote rural enterprises, one of the key areas is to develop pool of community resource persons – enterprise promotion (CRP-EP) who are local and support entrepreneurs setting-up rural enterprises.
Another key area is to promote the block resource center (BRC) in SVEP blocks, to monitor and manage the community resource persons, appraise SVEP loan application and acts as the repository of enterprise related information in the concern block. BRCs play the role to support sustainable revenue model to operate effectively and independently.
A mid-term review of SVEP which was conducted in September 2019 by Quality Council of India shows about 82% of the sampled entrepreneurs across the blocks reported being from SC, ST and OBC categories which signifies social inclusion – one of the pillars of NRLM.
75% of the enterprises were owned and managed by women and average monthly revenue of enterprises was Rs.39,000 – Rs.47,800 in case of manufacturing, Rs.41,700 in case of services and Rs.36,000 in case of trading. The study also shows that about 57% of the total household income of the entrepreneurs is through SVEP enterprises.