Street vendors in Hyderabad to tie up with delivery apps

HYDERABAD: After New Delhi, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Varanasi, and Indore, Hyderabad is all set to be the sixth city in the country to enable vendors selling street-food to tie up with food delivery apps, as part of the Prime Minister Street Vendor’s Atma Nirbhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) scheme.
Officials of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) have already started helping street vendors with PAN and FSSAI registration. The vendors will be trained on hygiene, technology/partner app usage, menu digitization, pricing, and packaging as a part of the project.
The program has been taken up under the ‘Main Bhi Digital’ campaign, which will continue till January 22. “The street vendors will be sensitized to get on-board with e-commerce platforms like Zomato, Swiggy, and UberEats to widen their markets, as the pilots conducted in five cities yielded good results,” a statement issued by GHMC read.
As per GHMC records, 1,57,499 street vendors (including ones selling food) have been identified. Of these, 57,372 loan applications have been uploaded and loans to 37,465 street vendors have been granted.
The civic body has issued 1,44,279 identity cards to street vendors. Mobilization of vendors to camps, sanctioning and disbursing loan applications, and educating vendors about repayment of loans are among the activities underway. As a part of the project, vendors are being provided financial assistance of Rs 10,000. “The vendors will repay the loan in 12 installments and the interest rate is seven percent,” said a GHMC official.