ARTH, a financial service provider for MSMEs in India, has announced its strategic partnership with ACCESS Development Services to provide credit linkages to all women trained by the latter one to empower them to become micro-entrepreneurs. 

The company claimed that this partnership would focus on empowering 5000 women identified by ACCESS across India with a target size of Rs 15 crore in the first year.

Women entrepreneurship in India is expected to play a significant role in achieving the country’s vision of a five trillion dollar economy. However, the inaccessibility to credit and other financial tools may make it difficult. To bridge this gap, ARTH has claimed to establish a credit model that supports new-to-credit, digital and non-digital micro businesses and seeks to create better financial opportunities for women-led enterprises. 

Prior to this, both companies engaged in a project called Samriddhi-Kirana for women, which focussed on providing credit linkage opportunities for 300 women entrepreneurs from across Lucknow and Kanpur.

Speaking on the association, Shweta Aprameya, the founder and CEO of ARTH, said, “ACCESS has been doing some phenomenal work in empowering communities by enabling access to resources, capital and markets and building inclusive value chains. We at ARTH hope to actively support them in their mission for creating sustainable livelihoods using our key strengths in providing access to financial products and financial literacy.”

Vipin Sharma, CEO of ACCESS Development Services, added, “Micro entrepreneurs, especially women founders face a constant challenge meeting their working capital needs. This partnership with ARTH will help the women entrepreneurs to get over the difficulties of the working capital gap and their capability to grow their business.”