Pune: Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) has started a full-fledged Merchant Banking operations to benefit the expanding number of growth oriented MSMEs, especially those with a strong technology and innovation quotient. Officials believe that the initiative would enhance access of MSMEs to capital markets including SME Trading Platform and Institutional Trading Platform.
Recently, SIDBI had organised an interactive workshop in Mumbai. The meeting was aimed at sharing ideas, issues, constraints and suggestions for addressing the challenges in MSMEs accessing capital through the SME Exchanges or the Institutional Trading Platform of BSE and NSE. Several suggestions were extended by the participants to make the SME Exchanges and the ITP vibrant and responsive to the needs of these growth oriented MSMEs.
Ajay K Kapur, Deputy Managing Director, informed that SIDBI has supported over 125 Venture Capital Funds and thus finds an extended service for listing the investee companies in SME exchanges through its merchant banking operations. “SIDBI by virtue of direct credit assistance for nearly two decades also has a good number of such MSMEs who would like to list in the SME exchanges. It is this strength that SIDBI would like to utilise by connecting the right investment opportunity to the funds and also would like to help these funds with exit opportunities at attractive valuations,” officials stated.
Kapur expressed confidence that significant increase in number of venture funds active in startups/MSME space in past two years will create large pipe of fast growing companies seeking public markets. “This will prove beneficial to the SME exchange as well as investors seeking liquidity or exit. SIDBI has been constantly inventing and reorienting itself for bringing out appropriate solutions for varied needs of MSMEs and its current focus is on stepping up its role to provide entire gamut of value added services and interventions in this space to supplement and complement various risk capital, venture debt and growth equity assistance programmes of SIDBI,” he stated.
