Collateral-free loans made available for digital SMEs

There's  some good news for small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs) based online as  Shakti Foundation, a microfinance intuition, has joined hands with  Delivery Tiger, a courier and parcel service platform, to disburse  collateral-free loans among them, including F-commerce companies.

Shakti  Foundation and Delivery Tiger collaborated to launch the "e-Loan"  product that will enable online entrepreneurs to get up to Tk 5 lakh  within five to seven working days after filing an online application.

"Even  SME entrepreneurs who cannot apply for SME loans from banks due to the  lack of a trade license or other document related issues can easily  apply for this e-Loan," said AKM Fahim Mashroor, chief executive officer of Delivery Tiger.

"Online-based SMEs have boomed amid the  pandemic and as a microfinance organisation, we think that we can play a  role in developing the new sector," said Imran Ahmed, deputy director  of Shakti Foundation.

There will be no need for collateral to  secure a loan while the service charge of this scheme is also relatively  low compared to that of other local microfinance institutions, he  added.

At present, there are about 50,000 local business pages on Facebook, according to a recent report by Asian Development Bank.