Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: Champions portal was launched to resolve small businesses’ grievances around finance, delayed payments, raw materials procurement, labour issues, regulatory permissions, etc.
Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: The Modi government’s grievance resolution portal for small businesses — Champions has seen a 35 per cent jump in the number of grievances redressed. As of July 12, 2022, 48,308 MSME complaints were resolved in comparison to 35,562 complaints resolved as of July 15, 2021, since the portal’s launch on June 1, 2020, by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The latest data was shared by Minister of State for MSMEs Bhanu Pratap Singh Verma in Parliament recently. “This (portal) covers many aspects of e-governance including grievance redressal and handholding of MSMEs,” Verma had said. The overall queries received were around 50,000.
Champions portal was among the measures taken by the government post Covid for MSMEs including the ECLGS scheme, subordinate debt scheme, reclassification of MSMEs, Rs 6,000 RAMP programme, and more. It was launched to resolve small businesses’ grievances around finance, delayed payments, raw materials procurement, labour issues, regulatory permissions, etc.
The portal directs queries based on the nature of the complaint to respective branch/bureau/office heads in the MSME Ministry to attend them within three days. The matter “should not remain inconclusive after seven days” AK Sharma, former MSME Secretary had stated in a note while launching the trial version of the portal in 2020.
Months after the launch, the government had integrated the portal with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to get “social media insights relating to MSME”, “know the pulse of entire MSME sector without stakeholders going to the portal”, “know emotions of people involved with or dependent on MSMEs in real-time” and more, according to a ministry’s statement, indicating the use of AI by the government for more granular MSME data.
The government resolved MSMEs’ grievances through the internet grievance monitoring system (IGMS) up to May 31, 2020, or before the launch of the Champions portal. IGMS was launched in 2016 and had redressed 15,277 complaints between FY17 and FY21 (8 May, 2020), according to the data shared by MSME Minister Narayan Rane in the Lok Sabha in March this year.
