Swiggy will soon be onboarding street food vendors on to its platform, as the food aggregator tied up with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) to run a pilot programme as part of the Prime Minister's Street Vendor's AtmaNirbhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) Scheme. Swiggy and the MoHUA will run a pilot programme, onboarding 250 vendors across five cities — Ahmedabad, Chennai, Delhi, Indore and Varanasi. The Ministry claimed the initiative will "radically transform" the business of street vendors in the country during the pandemic. Municipal corporations, the Food Safety and Standards Association of India (FSSAI) and GST officials will help vendors with PAN and FSSAI registrations. They will also be trained on digitising their menus, pricing, using Swiggy, and matters of hygiene. MoHUA and Swiggy will expand the initiative across the country in a phased manner based on the success of the pilot programme. What's PM SVANidhi? The scheme, launched on June 1, 2020, aims to provide working capital loans to street vendors affected by the Covid-19 lockdown. Around 50 lakh vendors in the country, who had been in business on or before March 24, 2020, are eligible for a Rs 10,000 working capital loan, repayable in monthly installments over a year. The loans are being provided at an interest rate of 7%. Around 7.5 lakh loans have been sanctioned, of which 2.4 lakh have been disbursed. What about commissions? Street food vendors beleaguered by the lockdown will likely welcome the ability to sell their products on e-commerce platforms. However,…
