Govt Backed Over 10K Tech Startups With INR 530 Cr Funding In Past 5 Years: MoS IT

The government has informed the Parliament that more than 10,000 tech startups were backed by the Centre through various schemes and programmes in the last five years.

In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, Minister of State (MoS) for Electronics and Information Technology Jitin Prasada said that the government has disbursed a total funding of INR 580 Cr 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 Cr.

As of July 31, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has recognised 1.43 Lakh startups.

This is nearly a 1.6% rise from about 1.4 Lakh startups recognised in June. Earlier last week, the government informed the Parliament that over 1.4 Lakh startups registered with the DPIIT have created over 15.5 Lakh direct jobs in the country. 

This comes on the heels of the Startup India initiative launched by the central government to groom the overall startup ecosystem. Under this initiative, there have been a number of flagship schemes which enabled the young businesses to expand to the stage of raising funds from investors or financial institutions.

Some of the schemes initiated by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) such as technology incubation and development of entrepreneurs (TIDE 2.0) has provided financial and technical support to startups. So far, it has established 51 TIDE 2.0 Incubation Centres.

Similarly, the government has launched various flagship schemes namely, Fund of Funds for Startups (FFS), Startup India Seed Fund Scheme (SISFS) and Credit Guarantee Scheme for Startups (CGSS) to support the growing entrepreneurs.

The Centre has taken a number of steps over the last few years to give an impetus to the country’s startup ecosystem for job and value creation.

In her budget speech last month, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman provided a relief to the startup ecosystem by fulfilling the long-standing demand of abolishment of the infamous angel tax.

She also announced a number of other steps which would boost the Indian startup ecosystem, like creation of an INR 1,000 Cr VC fund for space economy, reduction of the tax deducted at source (TDS) for ecommerce platforms to 0.1% from 1%, and setting up ecommerce export hubs in PPP model.

India boasts the third-largest startup ecosystem in the world and is home to 116 unicorns and 112 soonicorns. Last month, ride-hailing startup Rapido became the third unicorn of the year.

As per an Inc42 report, homegrown startups have raised over $147 Bn since 2014.