Revised Guidelines for the Scheme of Fund for Regeneration of Traditional Industries (SFURTI) have been approved on 2.3.2020 and published on the Ministry of MSME Website. Refer to link below.

https://msme.gov.in/sites/default/files/SFURTI_GUIDELINES_REVISED.pdf

The Scheme covers three types of interventions namely "soft interventions‟, 'hard interventions' and 'thematic interventions‟.

• Soft interventions - General awareness, counselling, motivation and trust building; Skill development and capacity building; Institution development; iv. Exposure visits; v. Market promotion initiatives; vi. Design and product development; vii. Participation in seminars, workshops and training programmes on technology up-gradation, etc.
• Hard Interventions - Creation of facilities such as Multiple facilities for multiple products and packaging wherever needed; Common facility centres (CFCs); Raw material banks (RMBs); Up-gradation of production infrastructure; Tools and technological up-gradation; Warehousing facility; Training center; Value addition and processing center
• Thematic interventions - Cross - cutting thematic interventions at the sector level including several clusters in the same sector with emphasis on both domestic and international markets.

Traditional industries have been broadly categorized as under:

• Khadi Industries;
• Village Industries; and
• Coir Industries.

Khadi Industries (KI) - “Khadi” means any cloth woven on handlooms in India from cotton, silk or woolen yarn handspun in India or from a mixture of any two or all of such yarns. The Khadi Industries comprise of manufacturing units for hand-spun and hand-woven cotton, woolen, muslin and silk varieties.

Village Industries (VI) - Village Industries (VI) includes any industry located in rural area which produces any goods or renders any service with or without the use of power and in which the per-capita fixed capital investment does not exceed Rs. 1 lakh (except for hilly areas, wherein the limit is Rs.1.5 lakh); provided that any industry specified in the Schedule and located in an area other than a rural area and recognized as a village industry at any time before the commencement of the Khadi and Village Industries Commission, continue to be a village industry under the KVIC Act. An indicative list of major VIs is provided as below: i). Mineral Based Industry a. Cottage Pottery Industries b. Lime Industries ii). Forest Based Industry a. Medicinal Plants Industries b. Bee-keeping c. Minor Forest based Industries iii). Agro Based & Food Processing Industry a. Pulses & Cereals Processing Industries b. Gur & Khandsari Industries c. Palmgur Industries d. Fruit & Vegetable Processing Industries e. Village Oil Industries iv). Polymer & Chemical Based Industry; Revised Guidelines for SFURTI- Scheme of Fund for Regeneration of Traditional Industries Page 27 a. Cottage Leather Industries b. Non-edible oils & Soap Industries c. Cottage Match Industries d. Plastics Industries v). Rural Engineering & Bio-Technology Industry a. Non-Conventional Energy b. Carpentry &Black smithy c. Electronics vi). Hand Made Paper &Fiber Industry; a. Handmade Paper Industries b. Fiber Industries vii). Service and Textiles Industry a. Apparel and garmenting b. Embroidery and surface ornamentations c. Fabric and yarn dyeing d. Services Khadi & Village Industries (KVI) today represent an exquisite, heritage product, which is ‘ethnic’ as well as ethical. It has a potentially strong clientele among the middle and upper echelons of the society.

Coir Industry (CI) - Coir Industry is an agro-based traditional industry, which originated in the state of Kerala and now has established itself in other coconut producing states like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Assam, Tripura, etc. Coir, a bi-product of coconut with diverse applicability, has age-old use in making mats, ropes etc. The coir industry employs more than 7 lakh persons of whom a majority are from rural areas belonging to the economically weaker sections of society. Nearly 80% of the coir workers in the fibre extraction and spinning sectors are women. Being an eco-friendly with natural origin, the coir industry is an export oriented industry and having greater potential to enhance exports by value addition through technological interventions and diversified products like Coir Geotextiles etc.

According to the MSME Ministry’s FY19 annual report, India has 6.30 crore micro-enterprises. These account for 30% of nominal GDP and create around 100 million jobs in the country. At the same time, these enterprises face myriad challenges including infrastructure bottlenecks, absence of formalisation, inertia to technology adoption, capacity building, backward and forward linkages, lack of access to credit and risk capital. Retail services envision to mitigate these challenges by providing ‘One Stop Solution’ to the entrepreneurs through Customer service centres (CSCs), which act as key channel partners for the roll out of services for entrepreneurs.

The udyaME platform https://udyame.in/() is a mobile app as well as a website to unleash micro entrepreneurship by catering to the all unmet demands of the entrepreneur under one umbrella. The web platform is available for entrepreneurs with no access to internet through CSCs and the android version for is smart phone holders. The platform not just provides opportunities to micro entrepreneurs, it also helps market players like buyers, distribution agents, technology providers, training institutes and service providers like CSCs to grow at scale by their reducing transaction and search costs.

• Register on the MSME website as a Implementing Agency
• Submit a Concept Note and upload on the MSME site with a self-assessed Scorecard
• Choose a Nodal Agency
• Nodal Agency allocates scores for the Concept Note
• If the score is more than 60, the Nodal Agency informs the IA for processing a DPR
• TA is appointed
• DPR is made and uploaded on MSME website
• Steering Committee approves the DPR/the cluster is sanctioned

It is a precise note on the project and products planned with financial credentials of IA

• It is a report consisting of 19 Chapters
• It gives an overview of the project consisting of Business Plan, Financials, Machinery, and expected impact, etc.

• Regular (upto 500 artisans)
• Major (between 500-1000 artisans)

Note: For North East and Hilly Areas Clusters, some concessions are there.

• Regular (INR 2.5 CR)
• Major (INR 5 CR)

A grassroots NGO who proposes the cluster

• It is a national level agency
• Has subject-matter experts pertaining to the given cluster sector