A70: Hawkers’ Light Point Expansion at Belgaum, Belgaum district, Karnataka

Project Details
A70 is the expansion of A39, which has been in operations from April 2005. The project has been running successfully on hybrid system and has been catering to 40 hawkers. The enterprise consists of 34 Sakthi batteries, 6 Supreme batteries, 40 Selco light Units, 8 TTT light units, 3 panels of 34 watts and 2 chargers (1 solar and 1 grid charger). However, the entrepreneur Srinath Aital is now shifting his base to Udupi and hence the need for transferring the enterprise to a new entrepreneur.

Mr. Ravi Vasant Sollapure has come forward to take up the successful enterprise. He has worked with Srinath in his business before (Parimala Traders) and has been a resident of Belgaum for almost 24 years. From the last 3 years, he is in the Electronic Weighing Machine stamping and servicing business.

Srinath Aital had procured a loan of Rs. 1,27,925 in April 2005 for the project with the help of S3IDF’s partial guarantee for 25% of the project cost (Rs 31,982) from Malaprabha Grameen Bank. The loan term is for 5 years. Srinath has quoted a a price of Rs. 1,00,000 for the purchase of the enterprise to Ravi, which includes remaining repayments for the loan. Once Srinath repays the loan, our FD in Malaprabha Grameen Bank will be released.

Since Ravi does not have the capacity to buy the enterprise, State bank of India (Shivbasava Nagar branch, Belgaum) has been approached for the loan. The bank showed willingness to give Ravi a loan of Rs 1,00,000 with partial guarantee by S3IDF for 25% of the loan amount. The loan tenure was to be for 3 years.

However at the last stage of processing of the loan, SBI rejected the loan application citing depreciating equipments and batteries and the risks associated with it. Srinath Aithal and Ravi also approached Malaprabha Grameen Bank to secure transfer of the loan from Srinath to Ravi. However, the bank was not agreeable to the same.

Srinath Aithal and Ravi next approached S3IDF for direct financing. However, seeing the risks and efforts involved in the same, S3IDF suggested that Srinath continues the project and the loan while slowly transferring the project to Ravi. Therefore, Srinath Aithal has decided to continue the project as well as the loan.

Therefore, the project details remain the same. Meanwhile, Srinath’s payments will be monitored so that our FD is released at the earliest.