Meta announces no-cost EMI for advertisers, small businesses in India

Meta (formerly Facebook) today announced new working capital support—no-cost EMI—along with enhanced service support features for all advertisers and small businesses in India. The announcement was made during the second edition of the Grow Your Business Summit, Meta’s annual event dedicated to the growth agenda of small businesses in the country. India is the first country where Meta has No Cost EMI has been launched. 

According to Meta, this feature will allow advertisers and small businesses to pay Meta for their advertising campaigns in equated monthly instalments over three months through participating banks at no additional cost of interest to them. Meta will bear the applicable interest payable to the bank, and give it as an upfront discount to the business on its ad spends. 

Working capital access is a concern for many new and growing businesses in the country. With no-cost EMI billing, they can choose any amount between Rs 3,200 and Rs 5,00,000 to convert to EMIs

With several small businesses in India taking to Meta and other digital platforms to reach their customers, there is a need for enhanced support to resolve their queries. Today, Meta also announced 24x7 chat support for all its active advertisers in India. 

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Announcing the feature, Ajit Mohan, VP and MD (Facebook India) Meta, said,

“With these announcements, every advertiser on Meta in India, irrespective of their ad spends, has access to financial and service support, at the click of a button to unlock new growth opportunities. We know that each business is on a distinct journey and we are committed to building India-focused solutions keeping in mind their unique needs. We hope that the initiatives that we have announced during Grow Your Business Summit will help small businesses achieve their business goals with greater flexibility and ease.” 

Over the last three years, Meta has working to enable easier access to timely credit. This journey started in 2020, when as part of its $100 million global grant for small businesses, grants totalling $4.3 million (Rs 32 crore) were announced to more than 3,000 small businesses across five Indian cities, including Delhi and Mumbai, to help them grow their operations amid the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In 2021, Meta launched the Small Business Loans initiative in partnership with Indifi. The programme enables business loans for Meta’s small business advertisers through third-party lending platforms. This too was an India-first initiative within Meta. At the Grow Your Business Summit, it was announced that the scope of this programme has now expanded to over 19,000 pin codes across India where advertisers from even the smallest towns and villages can now apply for collateral-free business loans from as little as Rs 30,000 to as much as Rs 1 crore. 

(Information has been added to this release for context)