Madhur Kumar, Chief General Manager – MSME Banking, Co-Lending, and Supply Chain Finance, Bank of Baroda
“Union Budget 2026 signals a clear shift toward structural strengthening of MSME financing, with banks placed at the centre of execution. The most significant intervention is the deepening of TReDS, including mandatory routing of CPSE MSME payments and enhanced credit guarantees for invoice discounting. From a banking perspective, this improves cash-flow visibility, shortens working-capital cycles, and enables safer, receivable-backed lending rather than collateral-heavy approaches. Also the proposed ₹10,000 crore SME Growth Fund complements traditional bank credit by addressing the equity gap for scalable MSMEs. This is positive for banks as better-capitalised enterprises typically demonstrate stronger repayment capacity and lower credit risk, creating opportunities for long-term lending and cross-sell. Expanded credit guarantee coverage further strengthens lender confidence, particularly for micro and small enterprises, supporting both growth and priority sector objectives. The Budget also reinforces data-led credit delivery, with integration across platforms such as GeM, GST, and TReDS, allowing banks to sharpen underwriting, pricing, and early-warning mechanisms. Overall, Budget 2026 moves MSME banking from volume-driven lending to cash-flow-based, digitally enabled, and risk-calibrated financing, while placing strong emphasis on formalisation, resilience, and sustainable growth of the MSME ecosystem.”
Salee Nair, MD and CEO, Tamilnad Mercantile Bank
The Union Budget reflects a clear recognition that the banking system is now in a position to shift from balance-sheet repair to purposeful credit expansion. Measures such as mandating TReDS for CPSE–MSME transactions and strengthening credit guarantee mechanisms will improve cash-flow certainty, reduce working-capital stress, and enable banks to lend with sharper risk visibility. At Tamilnad Mercantile Bank, these reforms reinforce our focus on MSMEs, agriculture and retail lending, where disciplined credit delivery can translate policy intent into sustainable, grassroots growth.”
Debarshi Dutta, Co-Founder & CEO, Ayekart
“This Budget sets a clear, outcome-oriented direction for Bharat by aligning technology, capital, and market access to strengthen farmers and MSMEs at scale. The launch of Bharat VISTAAR, integrating AgriStack with AI-enabled advisory, has the potential to support better farm-level decision-making, reduce risk, and improve productivity across diverse agro-ecologies. The announcement of the ₹10,000 crore MSME Growth Fund sends a strong signal of intent to back India’s entrepreneurial backbone and create equity pathways for high-potential micro and small enterprises. Alongside measures to improve liquidity and access to formal finance, this can significantly enhance supply-chain capacity and accelerate value addition. The renewed focus on high-value crops such as coconut, cocoa, cashew, sandalwood, and horticulture opens up meaningful opportunities to diversify cropping patterns and strengthen farm incomes. When combined with aggregation, post-harvest support, and better price discovery, these measures can translate into measurable gains in rural livelihoods.
We welcome the Budget’s clarity of intent and look forward to partnering with industry, financial institutions, and government to convert policy direction into measurable outcomes for farmers, FPOs and small enterprises across the country.”
Dale Vaz, Co-founder & CEO, SAHI – a newage brokerage house
“The Union Budget reflects the government’s clear and positive intent to strengthen India’s economic fundamentals. The emphasis on scaling manufacturing across seven strategic sectors — including biopharma, electronics manufacturing services, semiconductors, rare earths, chemicals, capital goods and textiles is expected to support domestic growth, improve export competitiveness and create employment. The decision to allow Individual Persons Resident Outside India (PROIs) to invest in listed Indian equities, along with higher individual and aggregate investment limits, is a welcome step that should help expand the investor base, deepen market participation and support the continued development of India’s equity markets.”
Mr. Thimmaiah, MD & CEO, Manjushree Technopack:
“The Budget reflects a clear intent to take manufacturing in India to the next level by moving beyond capacity creation to building depth, scale and resilient ecosystems. The focus on seven strategic sectors—including biopharma, the establishment of three dedicated chemical parks, rare earth corridors, capital goods and semiconductor manufacturing—recognises that globally competitive manufacturing is built through technology, infrastructure and strong linkages across the value chain. The Government’s outlay of ₹10,000 crore towards Biopharma SHAKTI marks a pivotal step in strengthening India’s biologics and biosimilars ecosystem, and enhancing domestic pharmaceutical capabilities. As domestic biopharma manufacturing scales up, it will significantly increase demand for high-quality, EPR-compliant and innovative packaging solutions, creating strong growth opportunities for the pharma sector and companies focused on advanced packaging solutions. In this context, the continued progress on the India–EU Free Trade Agreement is particularly encouraging, as it has the potential to improve market access, enable regulatory alignment and enhance export competitiveness for Indian pharma manufacturers, further accelerating demand for globally compliant packaging. Biopharma SHAKTI sets the foundation for India’s emergence as a global hub for biologics and biosimilars. As this ecosystem matures, the pharma packaging industry will play a critical enabling role—advancing high-performance, compliant and sustainable packaging solutions that support product integrity, regulatory confidence and export competitiveness across global markets. With the Budget’s continued focus on manufacturing, infrastructure and research and development, we believe it will meaningfully strengthen India’s manufacturing ecosystem while supporting long-term economic growth and job creation.”
Sanjay Agarwal, CEO, Ambit Finvest
“The 2026 Budget underscores a decisive push to make Indian MSMEs globally competitive. The ₹10,000 crore SME Growth Fund, providing equity support to high-potential MSMEs based on performance and scalability, is a landmark step toward creating MSME champions. Equally significant are measures to ease liquidity constraints: mandatory TReDS adoption by Central Public Sector Enterprises, credit guarantee support for invoice discounting, integration of GeM with TReDS, and development of receivables as asset-backed securities. The initiative to revive ~200 stressed industrial clusters further modernises infrastructure, restores jobs, and strengthens MSME competitiveness.”