Bhutan Entrepreneurship Funding 2026: DoEE-Loden Fall Call Offers Up to Nu. 1.5 Million

Correction: the program this page used to describe does not exist

This page previously advertised a “Bhutanese MSME Sustainability Grant” or “RAPID Entrepreneurship Support” offering up to BTN 5 million in blended finance for green tourism, crafts and green manufacturing, with an application deadline of 29 August 2025. That listing was wrong and has been replaced.

No source published by the Royal Government of Bhutan confirms a program by either of those names, and no official source confirms a BTN 5 million award ceiling for Bhutanese MSMEs. The ministry the page cited as the administering agency, the Ministry of Economic Affairs at www.moea.gov.bt, no longer exists. On 30 December 2022 the Ministry of Economic Affairs was reorganised, together with the Ministry of Information and Communications and the Ministry of Labour and Human Resources, into the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Employment (MoICE). The old moea.gov.bt domain no longer resolves in DNS at all, which is why every automated link check on this page failed. The current ministry site is https://www.moice.gov.bt/.

The sector list, eligibility criteria, evaluation weightings and application timeline that used to appear here were not drawn from any published call and have been removed rather than corrected. What follows is the real, verifiable route to entrepreneurship funding in Bhutan as of 27 July 2026, and it happens to be open right now.

The real opportunity: DoEE-Loden Fall Call for Business Proposals 2026

The Department of Employment and Entrepreneurship (DoEE) inside MoICE runs its business-financing calls in partnership with the Loden Foundation, a long-established Bhutanese organisation that has been financing local entrepreneurs for years. The partnership issues two calls a year, spring and fall. The fall call opened on 27 July 2026 and closes at 5:00 PM on 31 August 2026.

Selected ventures receive a blended financing package of up to Nu. 1.5 million, which is roughly USD 17,000-18,000 depending on the exchange rate. That is a great deal smaller than the BTN 5 million this page used to claim, and being honest about the size matters: it is seed capital for a small Bhutanese venture, not expansion capital for an established hotel chain or a manufacturing retrofit.

Opportunity snapshot

How the money is actually structured

The phrase “blended financing” gets used loosely, so it is worth being precise about what this package contains, because it changes who should apply.

The larger component is an interest-free repayable loan. You pay back the principal, and only the principal. Repayment is structured over four years, and you get a grace period of three to six months before the first instalment falls due, which is meant to cover the stretch between receiving funds and generating revenue. Signing a loan agreement and naming a personal guarantor are part of the deal.

The smaller component is a non-repayable derisking fund, which is distributed equally among all selected candidates rather than scaled to the size of your ask. This is the part you keep. It exists to absorb some of the early failure risk that would otherwise fall entirely on a first-time founder with no collateral.

Funds are not handed over in one lump. A second tranche is released only after DoEE and Loden jointly verify how the first tranche was actually spent. Plan your cash flow around that, and keep receipts and records from day one.

Support does not stop at the money. Selected entrepreneurs receive personalised mentoring, and once the business is operating you are expected to submit written reports twice a year. Treat the reporting as part of the obligation, not an afterthought.

The two special windows

The Women’s Enterprise Window is run in collaboration with the Bronwen and Brian Mills Educational Trust and is reserved exclusively for women entrepreneurs. It offers collateral-free start-up financing along with international mentoring. If you are a woman founder, apply through this window: collateral is the single most common reason capable Bhutanese founders are turned down by commercial lenders, and this window removes that barrier outright.

The Technology Award prioritises young Bhutanese founders coming out of computer science, IT and engineering backgrounds. If your venture is software, hardware or an IT-enabled service and you are early in your career, say so explicitly in your proposal rather than hoping the reviewers infer it.

What the reviewers weigh

The spring 2026 call published nine priorities that shape how proposals are scored, and the fall call uses the same framing. Reviewers look at financial viability and your realistic capacity to repay the loan; cultural, social and ecological sensitivity; clarity and realism of your plan; employment generation and community benefit; geographic and regional balance across Bhutan; whether your venture differentiates itself rather than duplicating something that already exists; your motivation as an entrepreneur; personal commitment and the strength of your team; and your business acumen, including whether you understand who you are competing against.

Two of these deserve emphasis because they are where weak applications lose. The first is repayment capacity. This is a loan, and a proposal that cannot show where the repayment instalments will come from will not survive review no matter how appealing the idea is. Build a simple month-by-month cash projection and show the instalment line in it.

The second is regional balance. Applicants from outside Thimphu are not at a disadvantage here, and ventures based in dzongkhags with fewer businesses have a genuine argument to make. If you are operating outside the main urban centres, state your location early and explain what your venture means for that community.

Required materials

You choose one of two submission processes.

Process A uses the Loden Foundation’s own business proposal template, which bundles the required elements into a single document. If you have never written a formal business plan, use this route.

Process B requires you to assemble the pieces yourself: a business proposal of no more than 15 pages, your curriculum vitae, a personal statement, a completed Business Plan Submission form, your latest Credit Information Bureau (CIB) report and, if you are married, your spouse’s CIB report as well, plus a copy of your CID or permit card.

Supporting documents are encouraged under either route. Lease approvals for your premises, proforma invoices for equipment you intend to buy, and recommendation letters all make a proposal more credible, because they show the plan has moved past the idea stage. Order your CIB report early; it is a common cause of last-minute delay.

Whichever route you take, submit everything as a single PDF file through the Google Form linked from the call announcement: https://forms.gle/xoRtc8DKvhahdxfe6

Timeline to 31 August 2026

The window is short, about five weeks from the 27 July opening. The spring 2026 cycle gives a reliable sense of what happens after you submit: applications closed on 2 April 2026, the shortlist was published on 12 May 2026, and final results followed on 20 May 2026. Expect a comparable six-to-seven week wait after the fall deadline.

Working backwards from 31 August, aim to have your proposal drafted by mid-August, request your CIB report and gather proforma invoices and lease documents in the first half of the month, and have someone outside your business read the full package before you assemble the PDF. Submit a few days early. Applications received after 5:00 PM on 31 August will not be considered.

Questions? Contact the organisers

The call lists Ms. Jitshen Dhelsey Phuntsho at 77195599 or dhelsey@loden.org, and Ms. Tshering Yuden at yudentshering49@gmail.com. If your eligibility is genuinely uncertain, ask before you spend three weeks writing.

Other verified Bhutanese support worth knowing about

Thimphu Startup Centre (Changzamtog). MoICE’s Entrepreneurship Promotion Division operates incubation space and co-working space at the Startup Centre, and issues periodic calls for vacant incubation units. This is space and support rather than cash. Recurring conditions in past calls include a requirement that you have a minimum viable product rather than only an idea, that you have not previously held space at the centre, that your idea not duplicate a venture already housed there unless you can demonstrate 40 percent value addition, and that you score at least 65 percent in a business pitch. Calls have gone to entrepreneurs in manufacturing, production, IT and IT-enabled sectors. Watch the MoICE announcements page for the current call rather than relying on a fixed date, and contact epd@moice.gov.bt or 02-330747 / 02-330748.

Bhutan Foundation Small Grants Program. This supports smaller, time-sensitive initiatives with grants typically ranging from USD 5,000 to USD 15,000, and has funded civil society organisations, government agencies, informal community groups and social enterprises. The most recent call for proposals was announced on 15 January 2026 for the 2026-2027 cycle. The Foundation notes it usually supports three to four projects a year through this fund, though it funded nine community-led projects in the most recent round. Details are at https://www.bhutanfound.org/our_work/small-grants-program/ and enquiries go to info@bhutanfound.org.

UNDP Bhutan startup support. UNDP has partnered with DoEE and the Loden Foundation on entrepreneurship programming, including the Springboard programme, which grew from 15 participants in 2022 to 36 in the 2023 Springboard Plus cohort. Announcements typically surface through the same DoEE and Loden channels.

A note on what changed and why

Some readers arrived here looking for a large tourism or crafts recovery grant. It is worth saying clearly that no such program is currently published by the Bhutanese government. Bhutan’s entrepreneurship support is real but modest in scale and built around loans, incubation space and mentoring rather than large capital grants. The government’s stated direction, through the National Entrepreneurship Strategy 2026, is toward faster business licensing, better access to finance and improved market access for local businesses, which suggests the DoEE-Loden calls and Startup Centre facilities will remain the main channels for the near term.

If a larger sector-specific fund is announced by MoICE, this page will be updated. Until then, the DoEE-Loden Fall Call closing at 5:00 PM on 31 August 2026 is the concrete, open opportunity, and the ministry’s own site at https://www.moice.gov.bt/ is the place to confirm anything before you commit time to an application.