Women-owned MSMEs registered on Udyam portal: The government’s aim to formalise the MSME sector with the Udyam registration initiative, launched in July 2020, has over 2 crore businesses registered, of which 19.43 per cent were owned by women. The data pertaining to the period from July 1, 2020, to July 27, 2023, was shared in a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha by Bhanu Pratap Singh Verma, Minister of State in the MSME Ministry.
Currently, Udyam registration portal is the only platform authorised by the government for MSME registration. To date, the portal has registered over 2.10 crore MSMEs, including 2.03 crore micro, 5.61 lakh small and approximately 52,904 medium enterprises. The registration count also includes 30.93 lakh micro units registered through the Udyam Assist Portal launched in January this year to get non-GST registered micro units such as street vendors onto the Udyam portal.
Importantly, before the Udyam registration portal, the government had the Udyog Aadhaar Memorandum (UAM) operational between September 2015 and June 2020. According to the data shared by Verma, women MSMEs represented a 15.67 per cent share in the total UAM registrations during the period. FE Aspire had earlier reported that 1,02,32,451 (1.02 crore) MSMEs were registered on UAM.
However, with the Udyam registration portal’s introduction, the government had directed UAM-registered units to migrate to the Udyam portal to continue receiving the benefits offered to MSMEs by the government.
Meanwhile, Verma noted that to encourage entrepreneurship among women, the MSME Ministry offers various schemes viz., Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP), Mahila Coir Yojana, increased guarantee coverage of credit to 85 per cent for women entrepreneurs under CGTMSE, mandatory minimum 3 per cent annual procurement by central enterprises and ministries/departments from women-owned micro and small enterprises, and more.
