SBI UPTECH — India's Bank-Led Technology Upgradation Programme for SME Clusters

State Bank of India (SBI) launched Project UPTECH in 1988 to pair its lending relationships with small-scale industries with an in-house technology consultancy of engineers and MBAs, aiming to prevent obsolescence and improve competitiveness across industrial clusters nationwide.
Cluster-level results were concrete: at the Agra ferrous-foundry cluster, a demonstration project on cupola furnaces cut suspended particulate matter emissions from 2,096 to 200 mg/nM³ across 50 surveyed units; at Coimbatore, 40 pump-manufacturing units adopted divided-blast furnace technology for roughly 30% fuel savings, generating about Rs 6 crore in follow-on investment and an estimated Rs 120 lakh in annual coke savings; in Palakkad, Kerala, 100 rice-huller demonstration units raised additional income by about Rs 345 per tonne processed.
Independent analysis by the Foundation for MSME Clusters notes the scheme's energy- and technology-upgrading component ultimately reached about 15 of the roughly 25 clusters originally targeted, and most published results date from the programme's first decade — a reminder that even a well-resourced, bank-embedded technology-diffusion model can struggle to sustain its original scale.

Read the full analysis: https://sbi.bank.in/web/faq-s/faq-project-uptech