World Bank, Sidbi and UN Women to uplift rural women entrepreneurs with bonds

The World Bank, the Small Industries Development Bank (Sidbi) and the UN Women, along with 10 wealth management firms and leading corporates on Tuesday announced to a new social impact bond to offer credit to rural women entrepreneurs. To be raised by Sidbi, the Women's Livelihood Bonds (WLB), will offer an annual coupon of 3 per cent and will have a tenure of five years.

The fund to be raised through this bond will be around Rs 300 crore in multiple tranches over the next three months. "Over the next three months, we will be able to raise about Rs 300 crore and put it through Sidbi into the microfinance industry for small and medium women entrepreneurs," World Bank's country director Junaid Ahmad told reporters while launching the fund here.

The funds will be used for lending to individual women entrepreneurs in sectors such as agriculture, food processing, services and manufacturing. Sidbi chairman and managing director Mohammad Mustafa said, "we are going to ensure that the credit cost to the women entrepreneurs will not be more than 13 per cent and the ticket size will be Rs 50,000 to Rs 3 lakh.

Some of the wealth management firms that are on board include Centrum Wealth, Ask Wealth Advisors, Ambit Capital and Aditya Birla Capital, among others and they have already reached out to high net-worth individuals and impact investors to raise funds, Ahmad said. Five companies from Tata Group-Tata Communications, Tata Chemicals, Tata Trent, Voltas and Titan have also expressed interest in investing, he added without disclosing whether other corporates are also in the fray.