Centre empowered over 10K startups with INR 580 cr funding in 5 years

NEW DELHI — The Union government empowered more than 10,000 technology startups through various schemes in the last five years, said Jitin Prasada, Minister of State for Electronics & Information Technology, in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha.

The Centre disbursed a total funding of INR 580 crore to startups through incubators including over 3,600 tech startups supported by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) with a total disbursed funding of INR 212 crore.

Under the Startup India initiative, “the government undertook flagship schemes such as Fund of Funds for Startups (FFS), Startup India Seed Fund Scheme (SISFS) and Credit Guarantee Scheme for Startups (CGSS)”, Prasada said.

These schemes helped the startups to raise investments from angel investors or venture capitalists or seek loans.

Prasada said with the help of these schemes there are over 1.43 lakh startups operating in India that are recognised by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT).

Initiatives taken by MeitY include Technology Incubation and Development of Entrepreneurs (TIDE 2.0), Startup Accelerator of MeitY for Product Innovation, Development, and Growth (SAMRIDH), Next Generation Incubation Scheme (NGIS), Domain specific Centres of Excellence (CoEs), and Theme-based Incubation Centre, Prasada said.

TIDE 2.0 was initiated by MeitY in 2019 with an outlay of INR 264.62 crore over a period of five years, to extend financial and technical support to institutes of higher learning and premier R&D organisations.

SAMRIDH provides support to selected accelerators for extending accelerator services to startups along with one-to-one matching funding support of up to INR 40 lakh.

The NGIS Scheme has solution-oriented architecture and aims to handhold 300 tech startups in Tier-2/3 cities over a period of three years with a total budget outlay of INR 95.03 crore.

MeitY has also envisaged and operationalised 42 CoEs that will aid in making India an innovation hub in emerging technologies.

Entrepreneur parks have also been established through STPI New Delhi, Makers Village in Cochin Kerala, IIIT-Patna and the government of Bihar on medical electronics and Fabless chip design incubation centre at IIT-Hyderabad to boost innovation-led electronic system and design manufacturing.