On the occasion of International MSME Day, the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises celebrated ‘Udyami Bharat-MSME Day’ with the launch of the CHAMPIONS 2.0 portal, a mobile app and signing of several agreements.
“This year, the MSME ministry will focus on boosting technology and innovation, as well as strengthening the association at the state level in terms of programs like PMEGP, cluster development program and infrastructure development,” an official at the event said.
Currently, India has over 6 crore MSMEs, and as per the officials, Udyam Registration, also known as the MSME Registration portal, has achieved record 2 crore registrations since its launch on July 1, 2020.
Through this portal, it becomes easier to receive government approval, Udyam Recognition Certificate and a unique number. This certification is required for legal and operational accreditation for small or medium-sized firms.
Among the registered firms, 97% are micro firms, 2.7% are small and 0.3% are medium firms. “The focus of the MSME ministry is not only to empower small and medium firms but also to have schemes that will benefit micro units,” an official said.
CHAMPIONS 2.0 Portal
The government launched the CHAMPIONS portal, an ICT-based system which helped MSMEs register grievances easily, in 2020. This covered 30 states and included more than 70 field officers and all banks. During the 2022-23 financial year, the portal had 16,262 grievance reports and during the same period, 16,221 cases were solved.
CHAMPIONS 2.0 is a new version of the portal, which includes an artificial intelligence powered-chatbot, multilingual option (Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu) and real-time feedback as well as its analysis.
Hackathon
According to officials, after the launch of theme-based Hackathon 2.0 on October 2 last year, a total of 632 Host Institutions (HIs) participated and 276 winning ideas received awards during the MSME day event.
This hackathon included several sectors such as agriculture, healthcare and power. The majority of the most successful selected ideas (80) came from one specific theme, which is “Low-cost indigenous digital healthcare system”, while for digital agriculture and electric vehicle, 31 and 28 ideas were selected, respectively.
The MSME ministry on Tuesday launched Hackathon 3.0 for women involving five domains such as agriculture, healthcare, power, service and miscellaneous sectors. The portal will be live from June 27 to July 11.
Geo-Tagging App
The ministry is working on a geo-tagging app for the MSME units and the data collected from this app will be shared with the PM-Gati Shakti portal. It will include the latitude and longitude of the physical location of projects under the MSE-CDP and MSME offices DFOs, testing centres and technology centres. The app will be able to capture on-site images of organizations, infrastructure and facilities, while users will get office-specific information by pinning a geo-point over the map.
It is understood that geo-tagging specific images helps understand the status of projects and the inputs for the approval process.
5G in MSME
In collaboration with the Department of Telecommunication, the ministry has also decided to bring 5G technology into the MSME sector under the Design component of the MSME Innovative Scheme.
As per an official, based on the applications for ideas on how 5G can be used for the benefit of the sector, the ministry will select top ideas and those selected will be able to participate in the India Mobile Conference in October. Financial support for implementation of the ideas will be provided under the scheme.
Signing MoUs
The MSME ministry also signed Memorandum of Understandings (MOUs) with other government organizations such as Government e-Marketplace, Tripura Government’s Industry Department, and Credit Guarantee Fund Trust for Micro and Small Enterprises (CGTMSE).
The MSME ministry has also signed an MoU with the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) for the creation as well as implementation of the PM Vishwakarma Kaushal Samman (PMVIKAS) scheme portal.
Additionally, the MoUs were also signed between National Small Industries Corporation (NSIC) and other organizations like National Scheduled Tribes Finance and Development Corporation (NSTFDC), and National Scheduled Castes Finance and Development Corporation (NSFDC).
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