Only Rs 5.66 cr invested in Start-up India out of the promised Rs 10k cr so far

The Centre’s ambitious Startup India initiative has managed to disburse only Rs 5.66 crore of the promised Rs 10,000 crore a year after its launch. On February 8, in its response to the newspaper’s RTI queries, the Small Industrial Development Bank of India said it had created a corpus of only Rs 1,315 crore for four private investment funds.

According to the programme, a Rs 10,000-crore “Fund of Funds of Startups” was set up and the SIDBI bank was made the fund manager. These funds were to be invested in the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s registered alternative investment funds, which would go to start-ups.

However, of the Rs 1,315-crore corpus, only Rs 110 crore has been committed to four companies – Kae Capital, Orios Venture Partners Fund-II, Kitven Fund-III and Saha Trust. Moreover, Kae Capital is the only venture that has actually invested in a start-up so far. After a commitment of Rs 45 crore was made by the SIDBI, it invested Rs 5.66 crore in a new venture.

According to SIDBI’s reply, the board had initially finalised a corpus of Rs 1,720 crore for six AIFs. However, based on the opinion of the Ministry, four of the six AIFs were committed Rs 1,315 crore. While the programme had said the Life Insurance Corporation will also be one of the co-contributors, the RTI query revealed that it had not contributed any money to the fund so far.

Source: Scroll.in