The Center has reported that it has joined hands with Swiggy to bring street food vendors online as a pilot in five urban areas — Delhi, Chennai, Indore, Varanasi, and Ahmedabad. The Union and Urban Affairs Ministry (MoHUA) expressed that it has onboarded 250 street food vendors in these urban communities and will soon roll out the initiative across the country. This initiative is supposed to be under the Prime Minister Street Vendor’s AatmaNibhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) Scheme. Media reports suggest this is to provide an access to street food vendors to an online consumer base, coordinated with Swiggy, GST authorities, FSSAI, and municipal corporations.
In a webinar with the Union Housing and Urban Affairs Secretary Durga Shanker Mishra, Swiggy’s CFO Rahul Bothra and the Joint Secretary Sanjay Kumar signed an MoU on the same. Pointed towards helping street food vendors with the occasion to get more cash-flow, the PM SVANidhi Scheme will likewise permit the vendors to avail a loan of Rs 10,000, which can be reimbursed in portions over one year. The street food vendors will be given a PAN and FSSAI registration, menu digitization, and pricing, cleanliness, and assisted with best packaging practices. As the project is on a pilot premise, Swiggy is yet to comment on the initiative.
In any case, sources inside Swiggy express that the group is working intimately with the FSSAI to bring the best practices and cleanliness measures in place. The organization is additionally preparing the vendors to assist them with the partner app. We have started the due diligence and pilot process. The idea is to give the consumer the option of choice. All of us have a favorite street food vendor, and if we can bring that to the consumer, there is nothing like it, said the source.
Reports recommend that the MoHUA expects to target near 50 lakh street vendors in and around metropolitan regions, and as these were the most noticeably worst hit during the lockdown because of the outbreak of the Covid, the initiative is aimed at giving them an opportunity to sell online.
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