India’s cabinet has approved a five-year continuation of the Stand-Up India scheme, with a target of providing financial assistance to at least 250,000 additional entrepreneurs who are women or belong to Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes. The programme will run until 31 March 2031 under the decision announced on 11 November.
The cabinet also approved a ₹4,111 crore credit-guarantee corpus for the scheme. That sum supports the guarantee mechanism for lending; it is not a statement that ₹4,111 crore has already been paid out to borrowers.
The government says the scheme has facilitated loans to more than 275,000 women and Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe entrepreneurs since its launch in April 2016. The additional 250,000 is a target for the coming five years, not a count of people who have already received new assistance.
Loans for new enterprises
The scheme is aimed at eligible women and members of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes who want to establish a new, or greenfield, enterprise. Covered activities include manufacturing, services, trading and businesses allied to agriculture.
Loans can be for more than ₹10 lakh and up to ₹1 crore. A lakh is 100,000 and a crore is ten million, so the range is above ₹1 million and up to ₹10 million. The finance can cover up to 85 per cent of the cost of the project.
A borrower can obtain a term loan or a composite loan combining a term loan with working capital. The latter is finance for the day-to-day requirements of running a business. The announcement sets out the broad forms of support, rather than an individual interest rate or repayment schedule for every borrower.
How the guarantee fits in
The guarantee is separate from the proportion of a project that a loan can finance. Under the approved arrangements, credit-guarantee cover rises to 85 per cent of the loan amount for all loan sizes. The standard guarantee fee is 0.50 per cent a year, with no additional risk premium.
A guarantee is intended to support lending by covering part of the lender’s credit risk. It is not the same as a grant to the entrepreneur or a statement that the loan has been repaid. The two 85 per cent figures also have different bases: one relates to the project cost and the other to the loan amount.
The cabinet’s briefing describes a target of an average of two loans per bank branch: one for a woman entrepreneur and one for a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe entrepreneur. This is an objective for lending, not evidence that every branch has already reached that level or that every application will be approved.
Earlier lending and future target
Government figures presented to parliament in 2025 recorded 126,508 loan accounts and ₹28,996.15 crore in sanctioned amounts for the relevant borrower groups between April 2022 and March 2025. Those figures describe accounts and sanctions in that earlier period; they are not the number of new beneficiaries under the latest five-year target, or a measure of the amount disbursed under it.
The earlier scheme also offered prospective borrowers guidance on setting up enterprises and preparing loan applications, alongside access to training and mentoring support. The new cabinet briefing says entrepreneurs will receive handholding through the loan process and business cycle.
The continuation therefore combines a lending target with a longer operating period and a guarantee fund for participating lenders. The decision establishes the framework through March 2031, while the number of additional entrepreneurs who actually receive support will depend on lending during that period.
