The Centre has announced ₹10,000 crore SME growth fund and ₹2,000 crore top-up to self-reliant Indian fund. Will these schemes have large impact on small enterprises?

All these funds that government sets up are very active. The government allocates funds to private equity and venture capital (PE, VC) funds who in-turn distribute funds to SMEs. These players have a good mechanism to spot star-performers, guide on right usage of capital, and new-age technology. In fact, M1 had also used this equity from SIDBI in 2017 and that is how it got set up. This is a very useful tool which will enhance equity capital for SMEs, which is not easy to come by. SMEs don’t have much access to PE/VC funds otherwise.

Centre has mandated TReDS to be transaction settlement platform for all purchases made from MSMEs by CPSEs. How many CPSEs already use TReDS and how many are expected to start using?

Almost 100 CPSEs are already registered on TReDS platforms. When a CPSE is onboarded, its entire supplier base is mapped onto the platform and invoices approved by the CPSE are uploaded. However, only suppliers who are aware of the platform and choose to avail invoice discounting actively onboard themselves on TReDS.

The key benefit of the new change is that awareness and access to the facility can now reach 100 per cent of the CPSEs supplier ecosystem. Once suppliers know that their payments are being routed through TReDS, they can opt for early payment by paying a nominal discounting fee without recourse, the platform will see higher participation from these vendors. Currently, this awareness is limited, as CPSEs typically inform only a select set of suppliers.

This awareness process has already begun with three CPSEs last week and is showing early results, with all their vendor payments being routed through the M1xchange TReDS platform.

Do you expect material up-tick in invoice discounting/financing due to linking of GeM with TReDS?

There is a lot of traffic coming in from this platform. A significant volume of PSU Purchases happens through GeM. As mentioned 75-100 CPSEs that are live on TReDS, purchases made by these CPSEs through GeM currently follow GeM’s mandatory payment mechanism and cannot be routed through TReDS. With the proposed integration, this payment flow can also be enabled on TReDS, allowing vendors selling through GeM to access early payment options by discounting their invoices.

With these Budget-related announcements, are you expecting pick-up in volumes?

This fiscal, we should be doing around ₹1.25-₹1.30 lakh crore in volumes. These announcements will give us an opportunity to do at least about ₹1.75 lakh crore next fiscal.