Women entrepreneurs see 2-fold rise in credit demand: Survey

Mumbai NeoGrowth, India's leading NBFC, with a focus on lending to Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), unveiled a survey that demonstrated that the credit demand from women-led MSMEs doubled by the end of the festive months of 2022 as compared to the pre-pandemic festive season of July - October 2019. This two-fold rise in credit requirements of women-led small businesses is driven by strong consumer demand post economic revival and subdued festive season spending over the past two years.

Arun Nayyar, Whole-Time Director and CEO, NeoGrowth, said, "Over the past few years, India has witnessed a remarkable shift towards different modes of digital payments. We believe that the convenience and affordability of transacting through digital payments fuelled festive demand this year. The festive season proved to be reasonably strong for the industry, after two years of Covid-19 disruption. Backed by this buoyant consumer demand pan-India, we registered that women MSMEs, in particular, sought more credit across business segments."

According to NeoGrowth's data, the top 3 cities which registered the highest credit demand from women-led MSMEs in 2022 are Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mumbai. Among the women borrowers, Fashion & Lifestyle, F&B, FMCG & Retail segments witnessed higher credit inquiries as compared to other sectors, as the festive period concluded in October this year.

Recently as per the data released by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the volume of UPI transactions grew by over 73 per cent y-o-y in the festive month of October 2022, indicating heightened usage of digital payments by consumers for their spending. Indians clocked a total of 7.3 billion UPI transactions in this month.

For the purpose of the festive credit demand analysis among MSMEs, the growth was computed basis the comparison of credit inquiries received from over 30,000 MSMEs during the pre-pandemic festive months of 2019 and 2022, i.e., July-October.