The Finance Ministry on Sunday said banks have sanctioned Rs 25,586 crore to about 1,14,322 beneficiaries under the Stand-Up India Scheme in the last five years for promoting entrepreneurship among women and SC & STs. This scheme, which has been extended up to 2025, covers SC/ST and/or women entrepreneurs, above 18 years of age, it said.

The objective of Stand-Up India is to promote entrepreneurship amongst women, Scheduled Castes (SC) & Scheduled Tribes (ST) categories, to help them in starting a greenfield enterprise in trading, manufacturing and services sector, by both ready and trainee borrowers, the Finance Ministry said in a statement.

Under the scheme, bank loans between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 1 crore are provided to at least one Scheduled Caste/ Scheduled Tribe borrower and at least one woman borrower per bank branch of Scheduled Commercial Banks. Started in April 5, 2016, the scheme has benefited 93,094 women entrepreneurs with outstanding loan of Rs 21,200 crore as of March 23.

In the case of non-individual enterprises, 51 percent of the shareholding and controlling stake should be held by either SC/ST and/or Women Entrepreneur and borrowers should not be in default to any bank/financial institution, it said..