Govt To Set Up Digital Platform For Startups & Investors To Make Signing Deals Faster

The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) will launch a dedicated digital collaboration platform for startups and investors to help them sign investment deals faster. DPIIT will launch the platform along with the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI).

Shruti Singh, joint secretary, DPIIT, said at a press conference on Friday, “This was approved in one of the national startup advisory council meetings. It is a match-making platform for startups and investors and it is in the final stages of closing. We will launch it in the next two months.”

Singh added the platform will only onboard investors and funding firms from India and onboard global funds after reviewing the performance of the platform.

“There will be funds that will be online, and startups will easily be able to access the same…from the investor side, there will be alternative investment funds (AIFs) where they will mention the sectors they will be looking at and how much they are willing to invest,” Singh said.

Talking about India’s ecosystem, Singh noted the younger generation in the country was very inclusive. “Around 50% of the board of many startups comprise women and jobs created by startups have also grown multi-fold,” Singh added.

Singh also highlighted some of the funding initiatives that the Indian government has introduced.

As a part of the Startup India initiative, the government implemented a Fund of Funds for Startups (FFS) scheme in 2016, with a corpus of INR 10,000 Cr to provide funding support for startups. That scheme also allows the government to provide funding to registered alternative investment funds (AIFs).

According to the DPIIT joint secretary, INR 7,300 Cr has already been committed to around 86 AIFs and the said AIFs were able to raise seven times more funds in the market. Singh added, “Investors have deployed more than Rs 9,500 crore in 600 and more startups in India through the government’s Fund of Funds scheme.”

Talking about other initiatives by the government, Singh added that the government has also set up a startup India seed fund with a corpus of INR 945 Cr to help early-stage startups. The initiative is aimed to support around 3,600 entrepreneurs through 300 incubators in the next four years.

“For this scheme, we have so far given money to more than 100 incubators and 436 startups have been able to benefit from this,” Singh added.

The government has been working to launch multiple digital platform to help the ecosystem better.

Days ago, the Union IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that the government is working to launch the Startup India Public Digital Platform, to promote the ecosystem of the country. The platform will be a one-stop platform to boost startups.