Govt To Launch A New Fund To Support Deeptech Startups: MoS IT

Minister of State (MoS) for Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) Rajeev Chandrasekhar has said that the government will launch the Digital India Innovation Fund to support deeptech startups in the country. 

The MoS made the comments during his address to more than 1,000 college students as part of an event in Kerala. 

Calling migration from the country for job opportunities as a ‘consequence of lack of hope’, the MoS said that the next decade was slated to be India’s techade. 

“… India at the moment is going through an inflection point. The coming decade is going to be India’s Techade. There are tremendous opportunities for young Indians. You won’t get these kinds of opportunities, anywhere outside India. We should always have confidence that this is our land and the action is in India,” said Chandrasekhar.

Techade is a term used by the industry body, NASSCOM. It refers to the ten-year period (beginning in 2020) which will define the role technology plays in India’s economy.

MeitY has been looking to scale the country’s burgeoning deeptech ecosystem. From artificial intelligence to the Internet of Things (IoT) and from drones to usage in agritech space, deeptech technologies are the backbone of a big number of emerging startups. 

This is not the first time that the Ministry has put the impetus on the emerging arena. Earlier this year, MeitY said that it was looking to promote more than 10,000 startups in the coming five to six years under its GENESIS  programme. 

The Ministry is also the brainchild behind the SAMRIDH (Startup Accelerators of MeitY for Product Innovation, Development and Growth) scheme which provides support and funding to early-stage startups. 

Despite a tumultuous year, Indian startups raised $25 Bn in funding across multiple sectors in 2022. While the trend was largely led by investor preference towards early-stage startups, mega deals fell with a thud as big names such as SoftBank and Tiger Global largely stayed away from fundraisers.

The year also saw startups resorting to mass layoffs as funding numbers dried up. With matters expected to worsen going into 2023, it remains to be seen how the ecosystem scales up. 

For now, the space shows considerable potential. According to the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), there are more than 84,000 startups in the country which have so far generated 8.4 lakh jobs. The ecosystem has so far minted 108 unicorns in the country with Shiprocket being the latest addition.