Driving financial inclusion through technology-led enterprise financing initiatives

• Aug 8, 2025
• 2 min

MSC is partnering with the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) to drive financial inclusion through innovative, technology-enabled enterprise financing solutions. The initiative is being implemented in close collaboration with National and State Rural Livelihoods Missions (NRLM/SRLMs), government-promoted financial institutions, FinTechs, payment banks, and other ecosystem stakeholders.

The objective of the project is to scale up enterprise financing through innovative products and channels, including digital platforms. This will include access to finance and business development advisory support to downstream women-owned microenterprises. MSC has a Project Management Unit (PMU) set up at the principal Financial Institution (FI) for the promotion, development, and financing of the MSME sector. PMU is responsible for the supervision of the design, development, and implementation plan to rollout innovative enterprise loan products. They develop the pilot test plan of the enterprise loan products, support the development of customized credit scoring models that include the new-to-credit (NTC) segment. They develop application prototype, defining the process flow, customer user journeys, and API integration required between the lender and partner apps. They also finalize customer documentation, monitor and review application testing, manage communication with the key stakeholders, monitor the progress of the pilot, review and fine-tune the product post the pilot launch and product rollout, and scale up. The FPS Sahay initiative was the flagship pilot under this project, designed to extend access to working capital through invoice financing for 60 fair price shops. MSC led the planning and rollout of this pilot, targeting fair price shop and corner shop entrepreneurs. As part of this, MSC also partnered with market aggregators to build a digital invoice financing setup, enabling seamless transaction processing and lender integration. Following the pilot’s success, the initiative is now being scaled to reach 0.5 million such entrepreneurs with working capital financing.

The FPS Sahay initiative is a flagship pilot under the PFICP-2 (Promoting Financial Inclusion through Community Platforms – Phase 2) project, where fair price shops (FPS) are the first cohort to benefit from embedded finance solutions.

The Gates Foundation commissioned this project.