Union Cabinet Set To Approve 2,000 Crore Fund For Startups

New Delhi: The Union Cabinet is expected to approve setting up of a Rs 2,000-crore credit guarantee fund by July-end with a view to provide funding facilities to startups, a top official said today. Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) Secretary Ramesh Abhishek said the fund would be used to lend to startups without any collateral.

He said that last week, the proposal was approved by the Finance Ministry. Under this, Rs 2000 crore will be disbursed over a period of three years. "One startup will get a maximum of Rs 5 crore. We are hoping to get the Cabinet approval on this by end of July to operationalise this fund," he said here during the launch of startup India hub portal.

He said that about 7,500 startups will benefited from this corpus and it will generate an additional funding of Rs 15,000 crore. Since the launch of startup India action plan in January 2016, Abhishek said Rs 960 crore of funds were disbursed to different startups.

The DIPP has put 1,000 facilitators for intellectual property (IPR) related issues besides setting of 547 tinkering labs under Atal Innovation Mission. "358 startups were facilitated for IPR, 1333 were recognised as startups, 39 startups were given income tax benefits and we are reviewing all other cases regard this.

"These numbers are going to multiply this year as we have changed the definition of startups," he said adding under the 'Fund of Funds' scheme, over Rs 1,100 crore were disbursed last fiscal.
This year, the DIPP has sought Rs 1,600 crore more from the finance ministry.

Talking about the startup India hub portal, he said this platform will help all the budding entrepreneurs who want to seek information related with government's scheme, about mentors, funders and accelerators
 

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